What Basic-Applied Issue is There?

Abstract

Human Factors (HF), or ergonomics, is the scientific discipline concerned with the interactions among humans and built systems. Because human factors research is transparently applied, HF researchers often find themselves in a supposed tug-of-war between the basic and applied scientific research communities. We provide an argument in this paper that there really is no meaningful distinction between basic and applied science. We provide two historical examples, one medieval and one modern, demonstrating that a fundamental impetus of all psychological research has always been application. Human Factors is not unique in this respect. We suspect the basic-applied distinction has been propagated to suppress scientists' wages and provide some parting advice to HF researchers in dealing with this issue.

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