It never ceases to amaze me, the totally unimportant or utterly pointless things people do research on. As a researcher myself, who has done her own share of unimportant research, I like to think I am a pretty good judge as to what qualifies as just your standard boring academic research, and what research projects really are a waste of time and should have their funding pulled immediately. If you are not convinced I know what I am talking about, please read on about a recent invention that made headlines, and make up your own mind about how important it is.

Apparently, there are some researchers over in New Zealand who have developed a tearless onion. Yes, you read it correctly, they have discovered a way to manipulate onions in such a way that they will no longer make us cry when we cut them. Now, isn’t that exciting and groundbreaking research? Crying in the kitchen, especially induced by the chopping of onions, is of course one of the biggest problems facing the world today, and luckily in the future we will not have to worry about this anymore.

The invention of a tearless onion got quite some media attention recently. One of the newspapers that featured the story was the New Zealand Herald. The part of the story that I think is especially worth mentioning is where it said, “The breakthrough has caused ripples in international circles.” I can just imagine people all over the world being excited about the discovery of the tearless onion. Moreover, the research apparently has been published in the international onion trade journal Onion World. Who knew such a journal even existed? Obviously, if you get your research published, this must mean that what you are researching is important, or at least that it matters to those other researchers working in the wonderful world of onion manipulation.

For those of you who cannot wait to start chopping tearless onions, I am afraid they are going to waste another decade of research funding on getting the tearless onions perfected. This is going to be someone’s life work, there will be a researcher who is going to be known as the person who invented and perfected the tearless onion. Who wouldn’t want to be known for such an accomplishment? All of a sudden I feel as if my own research is not as unimportant and pointless after all.