Foundational research into principles that leads nowhere is not the problem. The pool of cool ideas like this is unknowably large, and it would be sad to not se

Foundational research into principles that leads nowhere is not the problem. The pool of cool ideas like this is unknowably large, and it would be sad to not see papers like this from time time. [Edit: as long as it is a high-quality study of course.] The true problem of the publish-or-perish world is the moral hazard that it causes. In booming fields, it is very seductive to abuse statistics or to outright fake data. These are not always caught by peer review!