HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you know uninteresting but useful scientific discoveries?

18 points by wamo ↗ HN
I'm having mixed feelings about the starting assumption of the article "That's interesting!" by sociologist Murray S. Davis. The starting assumption is that it is desirable for scientists to produce interesting theories. Is it really?

The article goes on to analyze what makes a proposition interesting and what makes one non-interesting.

Do you have examples that contradict the assumption that interesting is necessarily desirable in science? Can you think of non-interesting scientific propositions that were very useful?

12 comments

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guizzmo
Don't know it it fits your question, but I believe Monte Carlo schemes are quite dull at a first glance, but ended up being surprisingly useful.
Evgenii1
Research is done because you are compelled to do so, it chooses you, usually something you never thought you'd be good at or interested in, you just can't stop, for me anyway.

An 'uninteresting' but useful scientific discovery is modern infintesimal calculus https://youtu.be/D8_BBoolMm8

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d--b
Like Hubble’s first director’s idea to point the telescope towards empty space for hundreds of hours?
ironmagma
The Big Five model of personality is a lot less popularly known than the Myers-Briggs personality types (probably because it's not fun to talk with your coworkers about who's more neurotic), yet it's more accurate.
kleer001
IMHO:

Meyers-Briggs tells everyone they're ok and that's ok. We're all different things at different time and we're all valuable.

Big Five says you're useful and pleasant to be around, but you, over there, are a useless pain in the ass. AND there's almost nothing you can do about it without a lot of hard work, and even then you'll regress, but don't worry, as we age we get better.

ironmagma
Big Five is just a clustering model. It’s descriptive, nothing to do with etiology or prognosis.
kleer001
By "Big Five says" I mean "Lots of studies using the Big 5 model have found..."

Of course, a model is inert. How could someone think otherwise?

"Conscientiousness is the most potent, non-cognitive predictor of workplace performance,"

https://phys.org/news/2019-11-conscientious-strongest-predic...

And I would go on to say "and in life in general."

http://jenni.uchicago.edu/Spencer_Conference/Representative%...

ironmagma
It's really not clear though, are you saying that's bad? Or that the model is bad because of these studies? Or that the studies are bad because of the model?
kleer001
I'm saying that Meyer's Briggs is BS and the Big 5 model isn't.

One is feel good fantasy and the other is hard reality.

Investing time, money, and/or attention in a model with no basis in reality, in one that has no predictive or explanatory power is a bad idea.

jbjbjbjb
Would evidence about masks wearing be one example?

At the start of the pandemic it felt very surprising to me that we didn’t have a definitive scientific answer to whether we should wear masks or not. You’d think something so basic would be known. I’m not that familiar with the evidence so maybe it did exist but the scientific community was unsure about supply.