IMO, most scientists are accustomed to chasing a problem without obvious pay or pay-off. We are also aware that the mere act of chasing down such a problem will usually be a fruitful academic exercise even if the result is knowing that a particular approach doesn't work. We want to discover things, discover solutions and usually we don't know what will be discovered, or even if there is anything to be discovered, until we go searching. Scientists (Ph.D.s in general) are accustomed to being in that situation, of searching for that which has not known to have been sought before.
I think of the teams trying to create autonomous robotic vehicles for the military prize. Even the teams that fail tend to discover some useful knowledge, develop some valuable techniques. Also, often there are students involved who learn, if nothing else, about the process of pursuing problems that have high stakes and great difficulty. Just saying: it isn't all about the money. -- Paul Bernhardt Frostburg State University Frostburg, MD, USA On 9/22/09 9:13 AM, "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> wrote: > but why would statisticians, > other highly skilled academics, computer scientists, programmers, etc. > would allow themselves to be suckered into a game where essentially > everyone loses except for the people who run the competition? Wouldn't > they have done better if they took the nominal "$1 per hour" times the > number of hours contributed to the project and used this sum to buy > lottery tickets? Wouldn't buying lottery tickets, by comparison, produce > more of a return than the net loss experienced by all of the losing teams? --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
