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I don't explain it very well.  I suppose it's because I'm uncomfortable dealing with these issues.  I'm not used to it.  Perhaps, though, that's what makes some of that insight provided valuable.  I don't know.  People seem to me to be creatures of habit that slowly regress towards an established norm.  That's not to say that people are lazy, or unethical, no, but rather that people have a tendency to feel sure in themselves that they're doing the right thing.

In a way it's a function of a reality check.  Kind of like checking one's work when first learning a new skill.  It's easy to consider one's work "good" on the first try, like when I was building guitars.  I was surprised the first one didn't explode when I put strings on it for the first time.  One slowly gets better at using the various tools in conjunction to perform a more complex task.  And, like the guitars, they slowly get better overall.

But along the way the simple tasks get boring, and people tend towards impatience with tasks below their perceived skill level.  They don't seem to be as valuable.  Whether these routine tasks are simply unworthy of one's time, or too crude to be worth the effort to do them well is irrelevant.  The fact is that the devil is indeed in the details.  Simple, crude tasks are the bones of life.  If one can find a way to enjoy those, then one can find a way to make a better mousetrap.

This concept may seem counter-intuitive.  So much of education is built on knowing more, doing more, being more.  Higher order problems, higher order solutions, higher order maths.  Skills honed in a continuing pursuit of excellence.  But the conquest of new knowledge is of no value without an understanding of the knowledge one already possesses.

In the same way that a thickness sander will do the same job as a hand plane faster, better, and more accurately, the hand plane requires patience, skill, and perseverance.  It requires one constantly check one's work, and move forward slowly, calmly, and exactingly.

This notion, so akin to the guts of the often touted, and now lost, work ethic that used to be a part of American culture is what's missing.  It was misunderstood as an amount of work, or a wealth of drive.  "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," says Daft Punk, and rightly so.  But the work ethic that's lost is not hard, is very much better, is in no way fast, and only its result could be said to be strong.

In science's effort to produce, a rigid adherence to the quality of the product has been lost.   Much like the guitar market, social science is now made of plywood (prefab sheets slapped together from a cookie-cutter pattern zipped through by a speedy, needy, and anxious workforce) which is much easier to assemble, but sounds tinny, hollow, and without any soul.

The human qualities, one's body of work, and body of experience, have been lost in an effort to simplify the process and speed us to a result.  Multiple publications are now expected before one even enters graduate school.

We're certainly kidding someone if we think this is how we develop quality research, but it's probably only ourselves.