Practical Magic

1,117 papers · Page 23 of 23

Research with immediate practical use. A method, a material, or a procedure that works today and changes what is possible at the bench or in the field.

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A simple brain wave test can tell you if that spinal surgery will actually fix your back pain or just be a total waste of time.

If you talk about "maintaining" the world instead of "changing" it, the political fight over climate change mostly disappears.

Planting native flowers might actually be worse for city birds and bees than those "exotic" gardens people love to hate.

Trade wars aren't actually stopping global trade because individual companies are just ignoring the politics and doing their own thing.

You can predict what the Fed is going to do weeks early just by watching "secret" emergency cash requests from foreign banks.

Blocking new roads in National Forests sounds green, but it actually does absolutely nothing to stop wildfires.

You’d actually make more money if you ignored the experts and messed with your investment portfolio 94% less often.

Central banks might want to start setting interest rates based on how much regular people are freaking out about the price of groceries.

Credit rating agencies are so slow that by the time they warn you a country is going broke, the disaster is already ancient history.

In developing countries, not having job websites actually makes it faster for companies to hire people.

Stock analysts who actually sign up as official "advisers" give way better tips because they’re legally forced to be honest with you.

You only need to put rat traps on 4% of a farm to protect the entire field from getting trashed.

Teaching healthcare workers how to manage their supplies actually saves more lives than giving them extra medical training.

You can actually predict if an industry is going to tank just by counting how many times the word "shall" appears in its regulations.

Corporate "innovation labs" are basically $100 billion money pits that make projects four times more expensive and a year late.

A simple software update at the Patent Office accidentally broke the main way scientists study whether patents are actually worth anything.