The following is adapted from Richard Feynman's famous Caltech commencement speech to the class of 1974. I have always loved this as an object lesson. I fooled around with the language a little bit, but most of Feynman's words are intact. Still, on the chance that I have made the thing worse, in deference to Feynman, I am not using quotation marks.
In the South Seas there are people who follow a quasi religious practice known now as the cargo cult. During the second world war these people saw airplanes land, carrying lots of wonderful cargo, western goods that the Islanders had never seen before and naturally they wanted the same thing to continue when the planes had gone. And one day, the planes were indeed gone.
So they decided to take fate into their own hands and made long, straight pathways scratched out in the dirt, pathways meant to serve as runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, just like landing lights and to make a wooden hut for a control tower and to put a man inside the hut, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas. And there they waited for the planes to land.
They are doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks much the way it looked before. But something is missing. This is called "cargo cult science", because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing the key point and, of course, no planes will ever land.
Taken to editing geniuses, eh? The tale reminds me of marketing recos with three, all important rationale points, each of which could have nothing to do with the reality behind the situation...or worse, a litany of rationale points to provide something of interest for everyone. Always good to hear your take on anything!
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