Research Value Quotes

It has been a privilege to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to see how it might help mankind in more practical ways.

When radium was discovered, no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it.

The work I was involved in had no obvious therapeutic benefit. It was purely of scientific interest. I hope the country will continue to support basic research even though it may have no obvious practical value.

Every paper published in a respectable journal should have a preface by the author stating why he is publishing the article, and what value he sees in it. I have no hope that this practice will ever be adopted.

An important fraction of United States industry adheres to the idea that research of a fundamental character is worthwhile from a practical point of view.

Scientists have argued that research is good for health, wealth, and society, and the government has trusted them on that.

Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.

We need to ask ourselves: What use is our scientific endeavor and innovation when they are inaccessible to the people who need them the most? It is only when the benefits of research reach the person on the lowest rung of the economic ladder that it can be considered to have delivered true value.

Remember that no piece of honestly conducted research is ever wasted, even if it seems so at the time. Put it away in a drawer, and ten, twenty or thirty years down the road, it will come back and help you in ways you never anticipated.

People are voluntarily giving money to A.E.I. - there is no government money - because they think the work we do is valuable.

Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.

Our goal has been to more effectively promote the value of publicly-supported research at our universities, both to the Congress and to the general public.

Whatever basic science resolves, at some stage it is of use to society. The problem is we do not know when or where.

I felt strongly that since the pursuit of good science was so difficult it was essential that the problem being studied was an important one to justify the effort expanded.

The real value of science is in the getting, and those who have tasted the pleasure of discovery alone know what science is. A problem solved is dead. A world without problems to be solved would be devoid of science.

We academic scientists move within a certain sphere, we can go on being useless up to a point, in the confidence that sooner or later some use will be found for our studies. The mathematician, of course, prides himself on being totally useless, but usually turns out to be the most useful of the lot. He finds the solution but he is not interested in what the problem is: sooner or later, someone will find the problem to which his solution is the answer.

If you don't come home with data, you've done nothing.

I think that my research is valuable to my teaching. I think that the two complement each other and I'm able to present somewhat more stimulating lectures because of what's happening in research, so it's a good complement.

It is not necessarily true that expensive experiments are not worthwhile doing but there are plenty of rather cheap experiments which are certainly worth doing.

I have a simple algorithm, which is, wherever you see paid researchers instead of grad students, that's not where you want to be doing research.

And the Institute sent me a little film footage of Kinsey himself preparing to do an interview for television to talk about his work, so that was quite valuable for me.

I learned from Linus Pauling it's not a disgrace in science to publish something that's wrong. What's bad is to publish something that's not very interesting.

It takes just as much work to do a study of something that is unimportant as it does to study something important, so why not pick something important where you may affect the world.

Frequently, I have been asked if an experiment I have planned is pure or applied research; to me, it is more important to know if the experiment will yield new and probably enduring knowledge about nature.