Once
upon a time, I volunteered to be the chaperone for a youth service project.
We traveled to the Appalachians and spent a week repairing the roof of an old
tar-paper shack1. With a hoard of high-energy,
hormone-and-Mountain Dew powered teens running up and down ladders, using
hammers and power tools and having all-night flatulation contests, it was
inevitable that one of these irresponsible youth would get injured.
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And
I did! Playing volleyball.
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A quick trip to ER
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I
tore a tendon in my ring finger. As I remember, the tendon snapped when I
drove a thunderous spike over the net into the gaping jaws of the awestruck
opponents. Some of my jealous team mates, on the other hand, claim that I got
injured tripping over my jock. They claim that I jammed my finger because it
was stuck in my nose when I fell. Don’t believe them.
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Actual unretouched
photo
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It
was a very odd injury in that it did not hurt. I just couldn’t hold my finger
straight. Being a role model for the group whose job was to model responsible
behavior to the youth, I finished the game. And then went swimming with the
group. When we pulled back into the center at 9:00, I asked another of the
adults (one who had more sense than I) to accompany me to the nearest emergency
room, which was a half-hour’s curvy drive through the mountains to the next
town.
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The
emergency room was crowded. The first set of the night’s fatalities from the
barroom brawls were just finding their way in. I looked around the room at
the fellow whose wife was holding his finger. She was sitting across the
room, scowling at him and clutching a baggie filled with ice. I saw a man who
was hit hard enough that you could still read the PBR label (in reverse) on
his cheek, and a woman who would clearly need a frock of professional
seamstresses to put her leg back together.
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I
am glad I brought the other adult with me. I don’t think that the rest of the
patients would have been much in the way of company as I waited. .... and
waited. I believe it was about 12:30 when another guy turned to me and said,
“I’m glad I wasn’t hurt real bad, or I’d be dead by now!” I smiled and agreed
with him. It’s always polite to agree with someone when they say they are
glad not to be dead. But on the inside, I didn’t agree with him. If he had
been hurt worse, he would have been taken back to see the doctor earlier.
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Triage
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Medics
on a battlefield perform a process called triage to prioritize the incoming.
Triage comes from a French word meaning, “Honey, pick up some Spam. We’re
having company for dinner.” Luckily for this essay2, the American
meaning of the word triage has taken a different meaning. What triage means is to divide something
into three groups. In medicine it means that incoming wounded are separated
into the following three groups:
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1. Those who likely to die, despite all heroic lifesaving measures, 2. Those who are likely to live, and escape permanent disability and major disfigurement, even if the doctor is not able to work on them immediately, and 3. Those on whom immediate medical attention can have a significant impact. |
The
doctors concentrate their efforts on those patients in the third category
until such time as they can work on the first and second groups. In this way,
the scarce resource of the doctor’s time is used for the greatest good.
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In the case of my
emergency room visit, the person who admitted me clearly (and justifiably)
placed me in the second group, so I had low priority. That is why I and the
fellow who complained of the wait were serviced last.
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Some
health care critics claim that, in reality, the three triage groups are the
following:
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1. Those who are poor and uninsured, 2. Those who are who have insurance or money, but do not have symptoms of any expensive diseases, and
3.
Those on whom a walletectomy is indicated.
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Whether these bitterly cynical health care critics
are right about the way triage is performed is irrelevant to the story-line.
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Applied research management by triage2
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In
addition to being a really cool sounding word, triage provides a good model
for prioritizing applied research. For applied research, “incoming wounded”,
that is, sub-projects one is considering spending time on, are divided into
these three groups:
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1. Those aspects that will probably die, despite all heroic lifesaving
measures, 2. Those aspects of the project which are likely to live, and escape permanent disability and major disfigurement, even if the researcher is not able to work on them immediately, and 3. Those aspects on which immediate research attention can have a significant impact. |
I
will focus the rest of this essay on the first of these, the terminal
project.
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The terminal project
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It
happens on occasion, that applied researchers find themselves working on an
approach to a problem that just will never pan out. This in itself is part of
research. After all, if the “correct” solution were easy, it would be called
development! Driving down a dead-end street is only a problem if that street
is also one-way. So long as one recognizes the dead-end, and turns around,
there is no problem.
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But
we often find ourselves playing in the sandbox. (Or, more often, we find our
coworker playing in the sandbox.) We see in him that “glazed over” look of
one obsessed with meson transmogrification units. We hear the ubiquitous,
“Just one more month, and I will have it!” We hear the unheeded cries of the
prophet in the wilderness, beckoning the rest of the group to embrace the
technology which will save the company from complete and utter destruction
and humiliation.
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Let’s
face it, there are a lot of prima dons4 out there. I have worked
in five companies in my fourteen-year professional career, and there has
always been one where I have worked. (At least until I moved on to the next
company that was foolish enough to hire me! Funny how a company’s problems
went away when I left.)
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Is
this solely a matter of egos? I think that this may often be the case. The
errant researcher is dazzled by the potential of becoming the next Watson and
Crick, or Einstein. They justify their search by rationalizing that no
sarcophagi have been found by digging where there are already shovel marks.
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Warning signs of a terminal project
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I
also think that there are other routes by which one can get stuck in a one
way dead end, routes that do not require admission of a character fault and
years of psycho-therapy5 to solve. For those who suspect that a
terminal project may be something other than ego-induced, I offer some
warning signs...
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How many levels deep is the project?
Consider the researcher who set out to build a potato chip conveyance
mechanism. The decision was made to use a magnetic levitation device to move
the chips. The advantage of nearly frictionless motion is immediately obvious
to all but the densest of colleagues.
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After
many failed attempts, the researcher realizes that the magnetic fields
created by conventional means are not strong enough. The obvious solution is
to build a stronger electromagnet.
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After
many attempts to build such a behemoth, it is realized that the basic bottleneck
is the resistance in the wires in the electromagnet’s core. Obviously, a
superconducting electromagnet is the solution.
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After many attempts to wrap superconducting ceramics around an
electromagnet’s core, it is realized that ceramics don’t bend very easily. So
the search is on for a room-temperature, malleable superconductor. |
I
think that the line between applied and pure research has been crossed, and
the researcher has completely lost sight of the original job, that of moving
potato chips. If only the researcher would have noticed the nesting of
sub-projects and realized that there is another way to convey potato chips!
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the simplest solution is to
impregnate the potato chips with iron so that they can be magnetically
levitated6.
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Iron fortified potato chips
The Uni-disciplinarian, or ‘How Meteor
Crater Company got screwed’ - Once
upon a time, there was a company named Meteor Crater that built wooden boxes.
They had been relying on a certain supplier of nails for as long as anybody
could remember when that nail supplier had the gall to go out of business. In
a panic, the purchasing people had ordered an equivalent part from another
vendor, but they were having big problems on the shop floor. The CEO called
an emergency meeting7 of the executives to decide what to do about
this crisis.
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One
junior executive offered a suggestion. “I met this fellow at a conference
last year. He is supposed to be the leading authority on hammer technology.”
After much discussion, and few other promising ideas, Dr. Sledge was called
in.
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“Eenterezting...”,
the doctor said as he inspected the new nail. “I haff neffer zeen zuch a
nail. Vot iss dis shpiral doo-hickey zat goess from zee point arount und
arount to zee head? Und vy do zey haff ziss zlot at zee ent?” He set a nail
on it’s point on a piece of wood, and gently tapped it with a hammer. Seeing
no response, he hit it harder, and then harder still. The wood finally split
to allow the nail to enter.
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“Ya,
ve haff a beeg problem here. Ve clearly need a prezision hammer. Vun zat can
deliffer a blow hart enoof to zet zee nail, but not zo hart as to shplit zee
vood.”
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Und
zo Herr Doctor (oops, excuse me) And so the doctor set about to build this
precision hammer. His first attempt was to use calibrated titanium weights,
dropped from calibrated distances. Sledge had some initial successes and
failures, but could not consistently set the curious spiraled nails. He
eventually hit upon the idea of hammering under vacuum. By eliminating the
air resistance, he could reduce the variability in the force of a hammer blow
which was due to changes in air resistance.
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This
brought an incremental improvement in the yield. Sledge calculated the
current yield (probability of a successful bond) at about 37%. It was then
that the doctor realized the next limiting factor: fluctuations in the
earth’s gravitational force8. He experimented for months with
various means for propelling the hammer “head” (now resembling a bullet) into
the nail.
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I
could go on and on about the incremental improvements which Doctor Sledge
delivered. To make a long story short, Meteor Crater finally quit the crate
building business and set up a tourist shop in Arizona, and Sledge wound up
selling $5,000 hammers to the Pentagon. Meteor Crater got screwed because
nobody thought to investigate screwdriver technology. The moral of this story
is that “to a man with a hammer, the world looks like a bunch of nails.”
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The golden hammer
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I
remember seeing a sign in an engineer’s office that compared specialists and
generalists. The specialist is one who knows more and more about a narrower
and narrower subject until eventually, he knows everything about nothing9.
The generalist is one who gradually develops a broader and shallower
understanding until he knows nothing about everything.
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In
my opinion, the specialists are ideal for pure research. Pure research is
drilling a well. Generalists, on the other hand, are the best applied
researchers. They are best able to objectively weigh all the possibilities.
Applied research is clearing the topsoil from a field.
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Violating the laws of physics - When I
was a lad of 14, my father took me with him on a business trip. He drove to
the northern part of the state to talk to an inventor who was looking for
financial backing. The inventor had some kind of improvement to the Wankel
engine. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sure sounded neat to
me.
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He
also showed us a perpetual motion machine he had been working on. There was a
cast aluminum block, about 18 inches square. Inside this block was an
aluminum flywheel. Both the block and the flywheel had permanent magnets and
springs and gears. It was all orchestrated to bring north and south poles
together just when the flywheel needed a little extra momentum. The magnets
would supply the extra kick to keep the wheel going around.
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The
inventor gave the wheel a spin, and it whirred for a while and came to a
stop. “Well, it needs just a bit of adjusting, but I’ve almost got it there.”
[Well, it was almost perpetual!] I wanted to learn more about this amazing
machine, but my father politely excused us. Why my father would turn down the
opportunity to be involved in the development of an infinite source of energy
was beyond me!
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I
met a man who had an idea for a new medical imaging device. It would allow a
doctor to see things that you could not see with any existing modality:
ultrasound, nuclear magnetic resonance, and computer-aided tomography. The
only problem was, such a device would break some basic laws of physics. I
tried to reason with him, but he told me, “Wait until I get the Nobel prize.
Then you will see.” The student of psychology will recognize this as the
manic phase of a bipolar disorder.
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Basically
speaking, anything having to do with perpetual motion, time travel, moving at
twice the speed of light, cold fusion and changing lead into gold can be
pretty safely removed from the project list for applied research.
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When
once around the block starts looking like a Sunday drive - The “once around
the block” strategy was designed to minimize the potential for spending too
much time on the terminal aspects of the project. When properly applied, each
trip around the block serves as a reminder of all the other issues concerning
the project. It puts a bit of structure around an otherwise unstructured
process.
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The
“once around the block” process can also serve as an indicator of a project
which has gone terminal. Researchers tend to get stuck on one of the trips
around, inspecting all the wiring in the Empire State Building. When they
stop making regular trips around the block, there may be a terminal project
budding.
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Conclusions
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This
essay introduced a triage technique for determining the appropriateness of a
project in an applied research setting. The triage divides aspects of a
project into pure research, applied research and product development. Focus
was then put on one painful aspect of applied research, the terminal project.
Future essays will consider how to draw the line between applied research
activities and development.
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Notes
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[1] By the way, if you are looking for a posh vacation spot where you can sip
umbrella drinks and get your toenails done, I heartily recommend volunteering
for a week the Appalachia Service Project. [2] ... and the poor reader who is being forced to read this against his or her will. [3] Although the differences are often subtle, management by triage is not to be confused with ménàge a trois. The former is considerably more fun. I recommend it for any party that is getting stale. [4] “Prima donna” is the feminine version. Calling a male researcher a prima donna is improper grammar. [5] ... or three weeks on Prozac! [6] Note that there is a huge market of anemic women who love potato chips. By the way, I have submitted the patent application. I can optimize the levitation capabilities by completely doing away with the potatoes in the chip. My new Imitation Potato Flavored Iron Chips are currently being manufactured in machine shops around the world. They pay me to clean them off the floor! [7] “Meetings” are what companies call to stave off a crisis. The theory is that crises occur when things change too fast. Meetings are well know to slow things down, so they quite effectively delay the crisis. Not only that, but they also free up the people who do the real work to actually deal with the crisis! [8] Those of you with bathroom scales may have noticed this phenomenon. I myself have put much research into reversing the trend for this force to gradually increase over time.
[9]
Signal processing theory aficionados will recognize an allusion to the Dirac
delta function.
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Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Goldilocks and the three research projects
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