I tend to disagree with those distinctions and I'm inclined to think the difference is simply that, to a "researcher", doing things is a job; and to a "tinkerer

I tend to disagree with those distinctions and I'm inclined to think the difference is simply that, to a "researcher", doing things is a job; and to a "tinkerer", doing things is a joy. ## Scholarship To begin with, there are many "tinkerers" out there who practise good scholarship and at acknowledge prior art, as well as provide references. Anyone who is courteous and has the awareness that the world doesn't revolve around her would honestly document these things even if she is a "tinkerer". And just as there are "tinkerers" who practise good scholarship, there are "researchers" who practise bad scholarship as has been pointed out by @jacobolus. ## Testing I'm not sure what makes the author thinks that rigorous testing is only a "researcher" quality. The article just insulted all the "tinkerers" out there by saying: > "Here's another big thing. A tinkerer makes a thing and puts it out there. A researcher also tests the thing in some way, and writes up what happens." A "tinkerer" doesn't just make something and puts it out there. A serious "tinkerer" would not want to put something that doesn't work out there—it's embarrassing and it's just, wrong. To make something (reasonably complex) that works usually involves a lot of testing, even if the goal isn't to publish a scientific paper it would still involve a lot of testing. ## Goals This bit really lost me. It sounds like a bunch of self-contradictory, "researcher"-glorifying statements one after another. > Usually, goals in research are not just goals, but ambitious goals. The reason we don't know what the results of a research project will be is that the project is ambitious; no-one (as far we know) has attempted what we do before so our best guesses at what will happen are just that: guesses. A "tinkerer" can have ambitious goals. A tinkerer may do something that nobody has attempted before and, naturally, in that case she would just have to make guesses. If, hypothetically, I set a goal to investigate the possibility of using CSS to make high-quality 3D games that can run at 60 FPS in web browsers, does that make me a "tinkerer" or a "researcher"? What if, in the process of doing so, I practise good scholarship, document everything carefully in a well-organised format, but just simply have no interest of publishing it in a scientific journal—does that make me a "tinkerer" or a "researcher"? On this: > However, if you read a scientific paper those are usually not the stated reasons for embarking on the research work presented in the paper. Usually, the work is said to be motivated by some scientific problem (e.g. optimizing real-value vectors in high-dimensional spaces, identifying faces in a crowd, generating fun game levels for Super Mario Bros). And that is often the truth, or at least part of the truth, from a certain angle. The stated reasons in scientific paper is usually after written after the research has been carried out and they are designed to tell a reader why the works is important. In a space where everyone is struggling to keep up with publishing so that they can keep their job, who in the right mind would begin a paper with "our research group embarked on [insert amazing thing] because it seemed fun to do so and has never been done before"? Actually, I would love to read papers like that, because most of the time you know it's the usual standard crap when academics start a paper by stating a problem—it probably means that they haven't solved the problem and are not even close. Also, I would like to draw your attention to the last, contradictory sentence. It seems that the author isn't quite sure either. ## Persistence If a someone spends 10 years modifying and perfecting something that has never been attempted before, but does not care for its scientific value, does that make her a "tinkerer" or a "researcher"? Bottom line, anyone who appreciates, and wants to do, good work will naturally do all of those things above—"tinkerer" or not. To throw away sentences like: > Probably the most importance difference between tinkering and research is scholarship. > A tinkerer makes a thing and puts it out there. A researcher also tests the thing in some way, and writes up what happens. > While tinkering can be (and often is) done for the hell of it, research is meant to have some kind of goal. > Tinkerers are content to release something and then forget about it. Researchers carry out sustained efforts over a long time, where individual experiments and papers are part of the puzzle. ... is just simply conceited.