Engineering research

The word “research” is in danger of becoming in invidious term. At one extreme, it is being cheapened, like the word “engineer,” by use as an artificial stimulant of unworthy causes — a too-common abuse nowadays in the exploitation of highsounding words by self-seeking interests. At the other extreme, there is danger of what might be called research snobbery — a pose assumed by pedantic formalists who assert that only their kind of research is “pure.” No less an authority than the president of Columbia University has stated that the word “research” is being used to cover a multitude of sins. He referred to members of a university who go through pretentious motions and glean little pepperkernels of insignificant fact in order to make much to-do over trivialities.