Ouch.<p>The sickness in computer science starts with the name.  Science is more noble than engineering,  etc.<p>Don&#x27;t give me guff about &quot;long term&quot;,  because CS researchers chase whatever the fads of the funding agencies are and they avoid any subjects that have been blackballed.  (Look at how European agencies have lavished money on the &quot;Semantic Web&quot; but how research in this area is practically banned in the US)<p>Back in the day,  Cornell had several shelving units in the Library devoted to certain fruitless conferences that would go on and on without ever producing any real results.  Anybody in or around the field could name a number of promising areas that just don&#x27;t get funded.