Quote Originally Posted by jacks smirking revenge
But, truly, isn't that WHY we do research? Don't we do research to be proactive, to try to address problems before they hit us?
In a way, you reinforced one of my points. There actually is research ongoing that is done with no proactive or problem-based goal in mind. However, so much is geared to the proactive type, and the activist mentality has so permeated our culture that it's almost impossible for someone to think otherwise. You see it everywhere. The guys running the Mars rovers always say stuff like "Understanding how Mars dried out may help us prevent such a terrible fate here on Earth" Astronomers studying black holes or stars including our sun say "Understanding how solar flares are formed may help us divert a disaster here on Earth" or biological scientists "Understanding how mice store fat could help us understand Type II diabetes in humans" and on and on. You can just see a politician or activist following the scientists around waiting for an issue to grab hold of for their next campaign. In many cases, it's okay to have the research be focusedon humans and curing human disease, but the pervasive obsession over crisis and calamity is disconcerting.