Number 3
In a letter to his wife Gweneth, Richard Feynman from from the Grand Hotel, in Warsaw Poland writes
"I am not getting anything out of the meeting. I am learning nothing. Because there are no experiments this field is not an active one, so few of the best men are doing work in it. The result is that there are hosts of dopes here (126) and it is not good for my blood pressure: such inane things are said and seriously discussed that I get into arguments outside the formal sessions (say, at lunch) whenever anyone asks me a question or starts to tell me about his "work."
The "work" is always:
(1) completely un-understandable,
(2) vague and indefinite,
(3) something correct that is oblivious and self-evident, but worked out by a long and difficult analysis, and presented as an important discovery, or
(4) a claim based on the stupidity of the author that some obvious and correct fact, accepted and checked for years, is, in fact, false (these are the worst: no argument will convince the idiot),
(5) an attempt to do something probably impossible, but certainly of no utility, which, it is finally revealed at the end, fails ..., or
(6) just plain wrong."
"What Do You Care What Other People Think?", Richard P. Feynman.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
