Academic

Mike McBride, guest blogging at orgtheory.net, uses the "cocktail party standard" to judge the value of social scientific work: "While reading the research, I envision myself at a party and visualize whether or not the crowd around me grows or shrinks as I attempt to mix wit and charm in describing the empirical patterns and theoretical explanations.  If the crowd grows, then the topic meets the cocktail party standard."

He asks, "How much of your own research meets the standard?"

Of my present projects, the obvious candidate for meeting this standard is my cheesemaker study. In fact, my wife and I are hosting a cheese party tonight with the cache of cheese that I collected during my most recent trip to Wisconsin. We invited five couples, and all of them are coming, including several who were forced to change theater tickets or other plans.

Yeah, I would say that meets the cocktail party standard.