Monday, April 11, 2005

Popularity of using "in five years" to predict near-magic technology

Boing Boing (blargticle)


sebb says: "Why is this story not the biggest story in the media right now??!!?? (Cure for Cancer Within Five Years) Surely the best news of the millenium so far. A cure for cancer! all cancer! Posted as a side article on bbc news april 8th.
Whenever I read an article about a cure for peanut allergies (my daughter has a life threatening nut allergy), the articles always quote some researcher as saying it'll happen "in five years."


It is fun to see that most researches think in five years they will have a solution. What this means is probably they think they are close to a breakthrough that will solve the problem. But i bet it turns out that most of the researches are not actually close to a breakthrough because the study they are working on when asked doesn't turn out the way they hoped.

No comments: