Bob Park's Head Is Still In The Sand

ISS: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM OUR INVESTMENT?, bobpark.org
“NASA has issued a 266 page report on research accomplished during the 2000-2008 assembly phase of the ISS. Of course, assembly of the ISS has recently been completed. An appendix lists the papers resulting from this work. Most, but not all, are from the proceedings of NASA conferences, but some are from respected, peer-reviewed publications. However, I do not believe any major field of science has been significantly affected by this work, which is not so much wrong as just unimportant.”
Reader note: Gosh, leave it to a Physicist to remind us biologists where the real intellectuals reside (i.e. in the physical sciences). Parks says that even though a portion of the work onboard ISS has been published in “…respected, peer-reviewed publications” the resulting science is “…not so much wrong as just unimportant.”
Hmm…so Bob, at least in Biology (my field) our expert peers can evaluate our research efforts relative to other biologists, but it requires a physicist to tell us what’s truly important in the bigger scheme of things? Perhaps its just fear–that we might actually learn something interesting by carrying out biological research in space that bothers you, and most especially if that research involves humans as subjects, experimentors, or (worse) both.
Any other biologists care to weigh in?
— David Watson, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, National Space Biomedical Research Institute
and Molecular Microbiologist/Co-Investigator for three spaceflight experiments
NASA Publishes Report About International Space Station Science, earlier post