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Beautiful and Important: Not Mutually Exclusive

Nov 24, 2008

Even though PZ Myers' advice to press release writers is to substitute the word "important" with "beautiful" to avoid emphasizing the wrong things in scientific research news, Andre at Biocurious thinks that the most important thing about doing science is that it is important. If it weren't for the benefits to health and society (the National Endowment for the Arts puts $150 million into arts funding, while the NSF budgets $6 billion, he notes), he probably wouldn't have the job he has. Plus, he adds, "The response to Sarah Palin's imbecilic attack on fruit fly research would not have been half as effective if it had been only that fruit flies make beautiful experiments possible."

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