Albert Szent-Györgyi wrote: "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." How might we increase the value of our scientific efforts? Is it about better questions, better data or what?
My view is that it is definitely about better and more defined questions (with limitations or contexts defined or imbedded), especially in the human sciences. It is also about trying to stay current in a field as there are so many new publications it is often hard to keep up; sifting for good stuff and eliminating poorly formulated research is time consuming. Anybody want to add other reasons (of which there are many)?
I completely agree with Philip. I think his contribution clearly disects the main limitation suffered by researchers, at least by those in my field. Individuals can not afford to be altruistic, when the whole science system is designed to penalise them and their future perspectives if taking too many risks which result in delayed publications or in no publications. The consequences are too serious, especially in times of scarce, ferociously sought-for resources. Researchers are prompted to focus primarily on purpose-oriented, often short-minded objectives.
I think it is about better assessment of research needs, and asking the right questions
If questions are a major part of moving science forward is there a way to we use this observation to set funding and effort priorities or is this already being done?
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