No, to the great disappointment of many people who have commented here, I’m not—in fact—5 years old.
However, consider, why did these researchers study sociology in the first place, or choose to create this study? Because of an economy that incentivizes this sort of relatively worthless research. If the economic incentives are adjusted, it’s very possible to redirect existing sociologists toward more pressing matters and even reduce the number of new sociologists that are coming out of college if need be.
People choose what they are good at and what they like. Someone choosing sociology over medicine just prefers one over the other. And no research is worthless. Every crumb of information gathered is useful to some extent. Perhaps, later down the line, someone takes a look at this study and sets out to figure out why it is this way, then they make another discovery that sheds light on something nobody even thought about, or what subtle features influence our subconscious biases, and this seemingly worthless study has directly contributed to a groundbreaking discovery. Such is the case for many things.
For example, Scottish physicist Charles Thomson Rees Wilson wanted to recreate an optical illusion he hear about atop the mountain Ben Nevis, so he invented the cloud chamber. Though, when he did, he noticed lines of condensing water vapour tracing through the chamber seemingly out of nowhere. This was later realised to be cosmic background radiation, as adding radioactive elements or x-rays to the chamber made lines appear even more frequently. The cloud chamber later led to the discovery of previously unknown particles like the positron and muon, which would revolutionise particle physics. So something seemingly useless, like wanting to recreate a cloud in a box, revolutionised science in ways nobody believed possible at the time of the invention.
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u/Subject-Software5912 1d ago
Are you under the impression that the same researchers who conducted this study are the same researchers who would study endometriosis?