Switzerland Part II Episode V

Man, today did it. Quantitative scientific research, purely for the sake of its own existence, was utterly denigrated for me. I used to believe that good, solid research could inform policy, make positive changes for people, and could be used for good. Now, I realize, though it may tangentially serve those purposes, it's really to provide means for researchers to continue to fund themselves and their livelihoods.
Case in point: Here's a common sense notion - poverty profoundly affects many lifestyle outcomes. It affects smoking rates, it affects employment prospects in that people are corralled into jobs that are more hazardous, it affects housing quality and materials, as well as geographical location (such as closer to highways, industrial zones, petrochemical plants, etc).
So, I attended a talk today re: respiratory outcomes in children and environmental factors that impact lung function. Though the speaker was very nice, he's interested in doing a massive study to try to measure environmental factors that may impact pediatric lung development. When I asked explicitly about the socio-economic factors and poverty that would inevitably impact disproportionately on those who are lower-income as well as from lower-income countries, they had not really taken that into consideration. When asking about how this, then, could impact policy in countries where issues such as housing quality and placement, etc. could be affected if such factors were not taken into account, there was no answer. The 'scientific' approach was to determine and quantify the environmental factors (specifically pollutants, not environmental factors such as class or income) could affect pediatric lung development.
However, without disaggregating the data, and how it would disproportionately impact the poor, perhaps no significant findings will be found. Perhaps in aggregating the data, less aggressive targets and measures to decrease air pollutants would be made.
Sigh. What is the point of research if it is simply a fatuous exercise?