Editing Talk:2268: Further Research is Needed

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First! <small>—[[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.145|172.69.63.145]] 14:56, February 14, 2020</small>
:Please sign your comments. [[User:Jacky720|That's right, Jacky720 just signed this]] ([[User talk:Jacky720|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jacky720|contribs]]) 23:59, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

I got two things to say:
* What the heck is the "Woodward Hoffman textbook on organic chemistry"? I can't find it anywhere online.
*I think it's a reference to [https://archive.org/stream/WoodwardAndHoffmannTheConservationOfOrbitalSymmetryAcademicPressVerlagChemie1970/Woodward%20and%20Hoffmann%20The%20Conservation%20of%20Orbital%20Symmetry%20%28Academic%20Press%2C%20Verlag%20Chemie%2C%201970%29_djvu.txt]Conservation of Orbital Symmetry (1971)], whose chapter "Violations" starts with "There are none!" Unfortunately, the "Conclusions" chapter doesn't fully fit the criteria.  [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.196|162.158.63.196]] 17:23, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
* ''[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-579 In the event of an unsuccessful Action 10-Israfil-B, no further <s>action</s> research will be necessary.]''
[[User:Jacky720|That's right, Jacky720 just signed this]] ([[User talk:Jacky720|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jacky720|contribs]]) 23:59, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Paper title: "Constructive proof of P=NP". Conclusion: "No further research is needed" ... because anyone who read this paper can get so rich they won't need to do any research for rest of life, spent on nice tropical island. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 00:58, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
: ... other paper with similar property: "Experimental disapproval of second thermodynamic law" -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 01:01, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
:: Sorry, but when experimental disproofs (we really hope one comes by soon) appear, entire research streams into how to optimise the disapproval begins. "No further research required" apply far more to constructive disproofs for theory (i.e. like maths) rather than for the empirical sciences. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.119.67|162.158.119.67]] 19:22, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
::: You missed the joke being that "no further research is needed" was applied to the researcher - that is, that the researcher doesn't need to do any research - instead of on the field/topic. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:33, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Can someone make a category called "Research" or "Research Papers"? Other comics with this topic include: [[2012: Thorough Analysis]], [[2025: Peer Review]], [[2215: Faculty:Student Ratio]], [[1594: Human Subjects]] and [[1574: Trouble for Science]]. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.83|172.69.33.83]] 00:59, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
:Done. Is easy. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 01:08, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
::I thought a similar one already existed, since there have been quite a few comics talking about scientific study papers. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 01:03, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Here is a list of a bunch of papers that could have done this (but for some it might not have been known at the time): https://mathoverflow.net/questions/347540/what-are-examples-of-collections-of-papers-which-close-a-field [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 02:16, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Regarding topics that might reach a conclusion: The first subset that comes to mind is religious matters (e.g. "God works in mysterious ways -- let's not think about this too much.") The second subset that comes to mind is game theory regarding games that have been solved. (e.g. there's not much left to be said about tic-tac-toe.)

: Further research is needed to see why humans continue to play tic-tac-toe when it's so widely known how to avoid losing.  And into how anyone ever wins.  And why on earth Google has an online version, with 3 different difficulty levels.  Seriously though, there is actual research into how to have the best chance of beating a player who isn't very good (meaning someone who is bad enough to lose occasionally), which involves not only game theory, but also psychology about what mistakes an opponent is most likely to make.  Finally, there are newer, more complex, variants, such as playing on a 4x4 grid or in 3D, and new ones can always be developed so that the field is never closed.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.47.162|172.68.47.162]] 00:08, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
::Okay, what about a game of Nim? any variant that doesn't change the game so far as to be unrecognizable can easily be solved with backwards recursion. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.211.34|172.68.211.34]] 06:01, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
:::3 players. [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 15:05, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
:::Further research needed is into why Wikipedia editors keep missing the sentence "When played as a misère game, Nim strategy is different only when the normal play move would leave only heaps of size one. In that case, the correct move is to leave an odd number of heaps of size one (in normal play, the correct move would be to leave an even number of such heaps)" and posting lengthy comments on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nim#Is_it_just_me? the Wikipedia Nim talk page] about the strategy (for normal play) resulting in losing in a misère game.

Leaving this explanation "incomplete" would be perfectly meta. Please don't ever remove that incomplete tag [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.142|162.158.134.142]] 16:46, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
: I think it would have been even better to have the explanation say: "We believe this resolves all remaining questions on this comic. No further explanation is needed." and leave it at that. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:59, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

How about a subject where rather than further research not being needed to answer questions, further research is undesirable, as further investigating some matter could potentially trigger catastrophic results, such as allowing the invention of technology that would do great harm if available, ranging from being usable in crimes that can't be traced or stopped, or somehow destroying the world, or that further looking into some matter is likely to somehow drive the researcher insane?--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.21|162.158.74.21]] 06:42, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

If further research really isn't needed on the topic (although obviously papers get things wrong and results need to be reproduced as a check, so let's say this is that), then the next funding can go to someone else's research, and ''that'' is Good For Science.  Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@gmail.com [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.92|162.158.155.92]] 12:15, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm imagining a book titled "There are a finite number of primes", chapter 3 "Proof" reads "This page intentionally left blank" :-) --[[User:OliReading|OliReading]] ([[User talk:OliReading|talk]]) 18:04, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

there is a joke about cold fusion in there somewhere.--[[User:Artemis1101|Artemis1101]] ([[User talk:Artemis1101|talk]]) 15:55, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

There's a [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b00184 very good paper] published around a month before this comic which says something very close: "...we do not see any justification for such efforts, and we believe that researchers should focus their energy on other research directions." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.180|162.158.106.180]] 23:31, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
: Correction: just about exactly a month, funny enough! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.180|162.158.106.180]] 23:32, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

The comic's description alleges that the paper here claims to thoroughly explore all there is to its topic, but the last line only speaks of remaining questions that were supposed to be solved therein (which even leaves open whether this paper is the first one to assail those remaining questions).
Thus, if only one question, or a few related ones, had been left, one paper could indeed conclusively answer the last questions to a topic, especially if it only finishes what others have started.
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.185|172.70.250.185]] 00:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

smbc may 18, 2021: [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-2 Further research is pointless because this paper is the last fucking word. My command of the facts is comprehensive and new information is irrelevant because the theory is austere crystalline perfection.] --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.35.70|172.70.35.70]] 03:15, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

''The Classification of Quasithin Groups'', being the work that puts the final nail on decades of work in classifying all finite simple groups, may be a work that has the privilege to state such a claim. [[User:Flymousechiu|Flymousechiu]] ([[User talk:Flymousechiu|talk]]) 16:45, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Reading this comic again in 2023 and thinking about how comprehensively we've had to prove chloroquine's inefficacy for treating covid. It turns out that the key to exhausting a field of research is convincing a large number of people to do something completely nonsensical and blaming it on science. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.105.161|172.70.105.161]] 13:17, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Can't argue with [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2268:_Further_Research_is_Needed&curid=22742&diff=336941&oldid=295607 this replacement word], but the definitions given in the reason forgets the ''very'' common coinage that is based upon either {{wiktionary|belie#Verb 1|this, meaning 1}} ''or'' {{wiktionary|belie#Verb 2|this, meaning 6}} (probably both should be together, given that they lay even more interchangably than the likes of "laid", "layed" ''and'' "lain", depending upon dialectical preference...). And why also mention {{wiktionary|belay#Verb|this, meanings 3 or 4}} when it's more like the same (not even mentioned) word but instead meanings 1, 5, 6 or 7 (i.e. laid in play/in use/in full view, rather than laid aside). I'm surprised, in fact, to not find either word in the list of {{wiktionary|Appendix:English_contranyms|contranyms}}. So, yes, good edit if you thought it wasn't an obvious context how it was, but a very confusing justification. ((No, I don't think I wrote the original, but it is put in a way that I'd happily use myself, if needed.)) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.113|172.69.195.113]] 06:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
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 How about a subject where rather than further research not being needed to answer questions, further research is undesirable, as further investigating some matter could potentially trigger catastrophic results, such as allowing the invention of technology that would do great harm if available, ranging from being usable in crimes that can't be traced or stopped, or somehow destroying the world, or that further looking into some matter is likely to somehow drive the researcher insane?--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.21|162.158.74.21]] 06:42, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
-: You are only considering ideas that might run afoul of the ethics committee if it ran. Those are old hat. It is far more interesting and fruitful to point out that we have some examples of the diametrically opposite situation. e.g. the safety and efficiency of vaccines are so great that papers ought to end with "We should not wait for further research in order to recommend that vaccines be mandated." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.119.67|162.158.119.67]] 19:27, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
 If further research really isn't needed on the topic (although obviously papers get things wrong and results need to be reproduced as a check, so let's say this is that), then the next funding can go to someone else's research, and ''that'' is Good For Science.  Robert Carnegie [email protected] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.92|162.158.155.92]] 12:15, 17 February 2020 (UTC)