Tearless onions

It never ceases to amaze me, the totally unimportant or even utterly pointless things people do research on. As a researcher myself, who’s done her own share of unimportant research, I like to think I’m 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.

Apparently, there’s some guys over in New Zealand who have developed a tearless onion. Yes, you heard it right, 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 groundbreaking research?

You can read more on tearless onions here. The part that especially cracked me up was where it said, “The breakthrough has caused ripples in international circles.” Moreover, the research has been published in international onion trade journal Onion World. Who knew such a journal even existed?

For those of you who cannot wait to start chopping tearless onions, I’m afraid they are going to waste another decade of research funding on getting the onions perfected.

All of a sudden I feel as if my own research isn’t as unimportant and pointless after all…