Well, in an academic context, it's not clear the equipment needs to make money for anyone at any time -- it just needs to justify itself in terms of accomplishing some goal. But if the story told is being used to argue in favor of using that equipment in a commercial context to make all kinds of goods, the ROI should make _some_ kind of sense, and making those combs doesn't sound like it would, unless you were prepared to massively violate someone's patent.
Which is sort of an interesting idea. How's pirating-of-physical-objects (other than patented prescription drugs) going these days?
no version of the primatologist story includes further info about the comb
Well, in an academic context, it's not clear the equipment needs to make money for anyone at any time -- it just needs to justify itself in terms of accomplishing some goal. But if the story told is being used to argue in favor of using that equipment in a commercial context to make all kinds of goods, the ROI should make _some_ kind of sense, and making those combs doesn't sound like it would, unless you were prepared to massively violate someone's patent.
Which is sort of an interesting idea. How's pirating-of-physical-objects (other than patented prescription drugs) going these days?