Research competence is the ability to develop new knowledge and techniques that permit the development of creative expertise for improving basic human life. However, recent misunderstanding has tended to limit the image of research to isolated disciplines and narrow areas. This narrow view of research has prevented the channelling of research competence into vital areas of society – for example, studies of the effects on a traditional society of the injection of advanced technology. As a result, although research may have contributed to longer life span, it has not significantly improved the quality of society because of its neglect of important areas of society. Urban technological man, while enjoying greater comfort, is often confronted with a lack of personal significance because of the lack of creative engagement in life.
The vast majority of so-called research turned out in the modern university is essentially worthless. It does not result in any measurable benefit to anything or anybody. It does not push back those omnipresent 'frontiers of knowledge' so confidently evoked; it does not in the main result in greater health or happiness among the general populace or any particular segment of it. It is busy work on a vast, almost incomprehensible scale.
Much scientific research activity fails to take into account social, political and economic realities. Researchers may even avoid selecting topics which bear any relation to the problems in the real world, and take pride in the absence of practical applications for such work. Such research nevertheless constitutes a drain on scarce resources. Researchers must come to realize there is the lack of significant use for larger societal concerns, such as new life styles and structures, within the realm of social research.
If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well.
"If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants." (Albert Einstein).
In the natural sciences, most scholarship springs from disinterested intellectual curiosity. That commitment to the life of the mind is what distinguishes universities from other institutions.