Research fields

To the editor:

The press and public speakers are increasingly using the word “research” to mean laboratory science and related fields. In society’s quest for cures from diseases and for improvements in health and well-being, scientists justly attract praise, interest and funding, as well as constantly increasing knowledge of the universe.

Scientists, however, do not own the term “research,” which has a much wider connotation than is currently being used. It belongs equally to investigation in the humanities, fine arts, law and other fields whose objectives, not necessarily the same as those of laboratory and related fields, nevertheless benefit the human condition.

Beverly Boyd,

Lawrence