I thought that was a much more substantial and respectable research topic than merely connecting up a few machines.
In later years, we were often confused with each other (two Susans talking about brains on TV), although I worked at the fringes of respectable scientific topics – out-of-body experiences, memes, consciousness – without grants and usually without a job – while she went for the big time.
If that respectable thesis is true, the topic "the categories of being" is a pseudo-topic.
Additionally, which will be the main topic of our discussion, there are multiple scientifically respectable sets of background assumptions within a single field, and especially so if the field in question is under development.
"They were absolutely singular on this topic" — capital punishment — "because they were the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States".
"Respectable" girls are expected to just say "no," stay silent on the topic of sex and wait for a committed, long-term heterosexual relationship.
In Pakistan, "if one of the LHWs was married and the other unmarried, the married one provided respectable company and was better able to discuss family planning issues, a topic that was generally not acceptable for the unmarried worker to raise" [ 55], p 55.
Thanks to my advertising background and my nonfiction topic's appeal to a special-interest audience, the book sold a respectable number of copies.
Part of the initial appeal of the topic of "scientific explanation" was thus that it functioned as a more respectable surrogate for (or entry point into) the problematic topic of causation[1].
