Claim: Researchers should not limit their investigations to only those areas in which they expect to discover something that has an immediate, practical application. Reason: It is

When researchers limit themselves to investigations aimed only to bring forth immediate, practical applicable results, fundamental and theoretical results would not be achieved. Hence it is generally an agreeable claim that researchers should not limit themselves to researches that only gained through short-term endeavors and which has immediate practical use. Nevertheless, the reasoning of the statement is a fallacy because it is not impossible to predict the outcome of researches with any certainty.

To begin with, fundamental and theoretical results has their undeniable importance and there is no primacy for immediate applicable results. There are many examples of investigations leading to theories that has no practical use in their time, but in years after, practical use of them has been found. For example the theory of evolution in its inception was totally a theory. After years the theory has become practical in psychology, medicine, engineering and so on. Hence theoretical results and those fundamental results needed time to reach fruition they are worthy of their endeavors and researchers generally should not limit their investigation in the fields that is expected to discover immediate practical application.

Furthermore, when a researcher limits his/her concentration only to practical results with short term endeavors, there might be out of schedule results that with mentioned limitation might be lost. The derivative results sometimes can be far more important that what is primarily aimed. Consider Henry Becquerel. He was intended to find materials with fluorescence features. During investigation, he accidentally came to components that are radioactive and without being exposed to light, they shed lights spontaneously. He didn’t put them away because they were not his intended results, furthermore he didn’t know that what he sees has any practical use in that time. Henry Becquerel changed the path of experiment and with the salts of uranium he discovered the radioactivity of materials.

As far as reason is concerned, although it is not impossible to predict the outcome of research, there are occasions in science that researchers investigate without resorting to predict the results of his line of research. Regarding the last case, Henry Becquerel did not know that it is from his discovery that x_ ray would show the position of a bullet in the soldiers of world war. As he didn’t know that same material is producing cancer in many. Hence it is important to keep on going without necessarily limit our self to immediate practicability and to predict the results.

Finally, it is possible to predict results of a line of research. There are myriads of cases that a retrospectively aimed and predicted results has led to the precious results. For example, it was with the concentrated endeavors of Fleming and his confidence in results of his investigation that curing features of Penicillin has been introduced and made a leap in science. While Fleming came to know that a certain fungi inhibits the growth of bacteria in his cultures, he predicted the day that the same process will cure people with bacterial disease and directed his endeavors toward that day. Hence, the results of a research can be predicted with some certainty.

In short, researchers should not limit themselves to immediate results with defined practicability. Fundamental theoretical findings has always led to practical uses that without support of that theory would be impossible be achieve. Nevertheless it is not impossible to predict results of experiments and there are investigations that has given forth to great results because of the following of predicted results.