Free Research

I've been thinking lately, and here are some topics that would make really good Master's theses or even PhD dissertations. I provide them free of charge, just mention my name when they award you the Nobel.

   What is the correlation between the rise of religious fundamentalism in US society as a whole and the rise of originalism in the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution? Can both these things be traced back to a single source, be it social movement or world event?

   What is an electron, precisely? If you measure an electron one way it's a particle, if you measure it another way it's a wave, which means that an electron is actually neither of those things but something else entirely. What is that thing? Same goes for the other elementary particles. And don't tell me it's a vibrating string, that's just another barely-suitable model.

   Why do people become so eager for McRib sandwiches and Shamrock Shakes? The idea is that rarity breeds desire, no secret there, or the principle of intermittent reward. But neither of those things fully explains the fan base these horrible food items have. If you can unlock the secret to why people love these two things so much you'd go a long way towards predicting human behavior.

   Why are yawns contagious? Ignore for a moment the question of why we yawn at all, I want to know why yawns are contagious across species. If I yawn in front of my dog he's probably going to yawn too. Same thing if I had a monkey, which - God willing - I will one day. What's the deal? Why does it happen?

   To what extent does the media shape and inform political discourse? And I'm not just talking about drug addict right-wingers on AM radio, I mean broadcast television, the AP, Reuters, all of them. If the media doesn't tell us about it we don't care, so how does news coverage affect our impression of the political landscape?

   What are the ethics of complete sequencing of a person's genome? I don't mean the first time scientists finished the job, I mean what are the ethical implications for sequencing mine specifically? Or yours? Or the President's? We'll be able to tell a lot more about a person from their genes in the coming years, for instance if someone has a tendency towards being a serial killer. Do we pre-emptively treat someone for being a serial killer if they have shown absolutely no tendency towards that? What are the social stigmas attached to having a serial killer gene? And if we suppress that serial killer gene - we don't allow that person to breed - what are the implications for the human genome as a whole?

I swear, I should work for a think tank. Anybody have any idea how to go about getting hired by a think tank? Maybe creating one of my own? For that matter, how did they come up with the term 'think tank' in the first place?
   So many questions...