Because research doesn’t have “practical value” doesn’t mean it’s worthless. In science, all research has value, even — or especially — failures. If somebody finds something out that doesn’t work, then others don’t have to make that mistake. When somebody advances our knowledge even a jot, that information may have a pay-off years down the road, if ever. But we cannot research only the things that have “potential value.” That’s what Big Pharma does and see where it leads. 

Point taken Pete,  But it also does not mean its valuable!  A lot of research as pertains to bees, has not gone any further in 100 years,  and a lot of it with bees and pesticides is borderline fraudulent,  Take Wu's for example an hour on the phone with a organic chemist and he would have know HFCS could not contain Neonics, this "type" of paper is very common in our field right now.  

I read a lot of papers, as we all do.  The number that are well thought out and helpful is small compared to the number of , already done, not relevant, or done incomplete or incorrect.  The bad work is tarnishing the great work that’s out their!

You picked cholesterol drugs... lets get to salt....  lots and lots of research and data points... from both extremes.   And yet common sense will get you most of the way to a real world answer.

That was my point.

Charles

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