Scientific Research And The Art of Cool

Seth Roberts:

This reminded me of Brian Wansink’s comments about cool data. His notion that research designs should be judged on their coolness was entirely new to me. I’m not the only one; the Wikipedia entry for scientific method says nothing about it.

Using cool and research design in the same sentence is quite a bit like bringing irreverence to reverence. Once somebody says it, though, it makes sense. I remember being thanked after an interview; I replied that there’s no point doing the research if no one ever learns about it. Coolness obviously plays into that — influences the chance that other people will learn about it.

Sounds right to me. The "cooler" something is, the more people will be intrigued by it and the more willing they will be to invest time into learning more about it. Coolness has the same effect as increasing the benefit of the research topic. The greater benefit people see to learning about it, the higher price they are willing to pay to find out more.

It pays to be cool...