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“A student asked, ‘Yeah, but do the wrinkles always form in the same way?’ And I thought: I haven’t the foggiest clue!” said German, a faculty member at the Tho
by jtsylve 1y ago
“A student asked, ‘Yeah, but do the wrinkles always form in the same way?’ And I thought: I haven’t the foggiest clue!” said German, a faculty member at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. “So it led to this research to find out.”
I wish the authors would have mentioned the kid by name in the acknowledgement section of the paper. I bet the kid would have felt very proud and inspired to having their name published in a scientific journal.
- jaoane 1y ago[flagged]
- Robin_Message 1y agoIt's because such research has no obvious initial use that the public must pay for it; no private enterprise will fund it, and often it will be useless knowledge, but occasionally someone will figure something out that unlocks a whole new understanding of the world. It's publicly-funded venture capital for ideas.
- Qem 1y agoThat makes me wonder how many important results actually came from inquiries from curious students whose name was forgotten or purposefully ommited, lost from history. Any other similar examples? Student from Student's t-distribution was actually an engineer that had to adopt a pseudonym because of his employer, so I think it doesn't count.