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Cats are (almost) liquid

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253 points lnyan | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 11:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.217s | source
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joshuamcginnis[dead post] ◴[17 Oct 24 14:56 UTC] No.41870262[source]▶
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bayindirh ◴[17 Oct 24 15:02 UTC] No.41870334[source]▶
When asking these kinds of questions, I always remind myself "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge" [0].

On the other hand, I believe that researching how animals think, behave and "work" in general, is a very important part of being human. They're alive, too, and they defy tons of prejudice we have about them over and over. We need to revise tons of knowledge about animals and other living things, in general.

[0]: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHa...

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joshuamcginnis ◴[17 Oct 24 15:10 UTC] No.41870398[source]▶
So what exactly is your criteria for when a study should or should not be publicly funded?
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coldpie ◴[17 Oct 24 15:32 UTC] No.41870599[source]▶
Why are you asking us? I'm not a research scientist/funding expert. There are people whose job it is to decide that, and they decided it was. I trust them to do their jobs, just like they trust me to do my job when they need my services.
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joshuamcginnis ◴[17 Oct 24 15:37 UTC] No.41870662[source]▶
Why do you trust these people when for the most part, they are unelected bureaucrats serving their own self-interests?
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1. bayindirh ◴[17 Oct 24 15:41 UTC] No.41870708[source]▶
Because it's not like that everywhere in the world. For example, here, to be able to get funding, you need to pass a panel interview of researchers who are experienced in the area of your research. Our system employs "hordes of research experts" to shake down most inadequate ones, and push the rest to the actual researchers to further filter them.

IIRC, many if not most EU countries employ similar methods.