Last weekend I saw the writer Thomas Cahill on Book TV. He mentioned his book How The Irish Saved Civilization. The real contribution of the Irish, he said, wasn’t that they saved the sacred texts, it was that they brought humor to their study. “They brought irreverence to reverence,” he said. “That was entirely new.”
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.
I think most scientists will agree with Wansink, that coolness matters. I think you don’t find his idea in books and articles about scientific method not only because there is so little written about research design (at least compared to the amount written about data analysis) but also because it appears undignified. “I’m important, I shouldn’t have to worry about being cool” is the (very human) unspoken attitude.