This is very useful for laboratory science but not too much for computer science research for example.
You can typically make nice prototypes in a weekend and try out ideas. If one or two of these work out, you get a paper after a bit more work polishing it.
Of course you have to be competent and able to build prototypes, which is something I have seen about half of the students lack. In that case, you can typically also get a PhD by basically doing minor tweaks on existing tools and putting a lot more effort in benchmarking and story telling. Both are useful to science.
You can typically make nice prototypes in a weekend and try out ideas. If one or two of these work out, you get a paper after a bit more work polishing it.
Of course you have to be competent and able to build prototypes, which is something I have seen about half of the students lack. In that case, you can typically also get a PhD by basically doing minor tweaks on existing tools and putting a lot more effort in benchmarking and story telling. Both are useful to science.