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119."When research priorities are being set for science, education, or any other area, the most important question to consider is: How many people's lives will be improved if the results are successful?"
The argument about how to decide the research priorities has last for many decades in our society that today we are still disputing on it. The speaker claims that how many people’s lives will be improved is the most important standard to which area priorities will give. However, I little agree with this claim. In my point of view, considering the combination the long term interests with short term needs of the human society is more important.
It is undisputed that the purposes of the researches conducted in our society are all aiming at improving our society and serve to human life ultimately. Research can be divided into two kinds, fundamental research and applied research. Applied research, is the application of knowledge one or more natural scientific fields to solving practical problems. Field of engineering are applied sciences. Applied research in these fields is important for technology development, which is used in industrial settings directly solve to the society. And fundamental research, or basic research, often be considered as the opposite to applied research carried out “for research’s’ sake”, and less important than applied research. However, the truth is that basic research is premise and element of applied research. For example, Environment Engineering, an interdiscipline, base on the chemistry and physics, with either chemistry or physics’ study development, it can not go any further.
As we know, research in some areas could not bring benefits to people’s lives in a vey short time. Nevertheless, they are required to continue necessarily. By taking account of the long term interests of human society, this is vey vital for the development of our society. For instance, Tibet Railway, the great feat in human history, had been constructed in China. Absolutely, it will bring the spring of economics and social stability in Tibet. As is concerned a lot that “frozen soil” is a difficult problem to solve in the process of this huge project. The solution of this problem is base on the subject geocryology which has taken more than 50 years almost half a generation researching in the laboratory. At the beginning of this research, it was hardly to predict the result’s success and the future worth. But there is only one which we can certainly confirm is that the development of our society needs it, and we were ready to commit our life to this devilish problem.
Furthermore, in our society, solving the urgent social problems is more significant than bringing how much comfort to how many the people. On one hand, many problems are threatening our society persistently. Considering energy crisis today, most natural resources are nonrenewable, lack of which the development of the modern society will be impeded, to discover new energy is the one of most urgent problems in our society we have to take a lot time and money to research for. On the other hand, many people wish to have an ageless life in modern society, is it to say we should give the priority to the research of medicine which can make people’s life ageless. The point is that without enough energy to support people’s life, whenever it is ageless, it will be a horrible dream.
In sum, for the development of human society, judge the priority of research, we should take account of the interests in the future and the needs in the recent period together or even take a balance between them. |
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