That's fair but it does mean that those new technologies - especially if they aim to replace other technologies - will be tested on that parameter. And the difference would have to be large enough for a party to take the risk to go to manufacturing and then for other parties to take the risk to buy the product.

Sort term? No. Long term? Sure. If you're only planning for the next 5 minutes you're not going to make it very far. It's not like these people aren't well aware of all this. That's in fact the motivation behind the research. No one researches things that are useless, only things that seem useless to people who don't know. Again, this is a university researcher, they're kinda just doing their job... I don't know why this is even a contestable thing...

Because that's how the typical arrival of improvements in solar power are usually hailed. I see announcements like these to the tune of one every couple of weeks and they rarely make it to production and if they do they end up as niche rather than mainstream. But some of them do make it. In the meantime, the steady drip of cost reduction due to economies of scale make silicon based solar panels harder and harder to compete with for new technologies, not unlike what we've seen with other semiconductors.

Yeah, again, university. That's typically at least a few years from production if not a full decade. The context matters.

But if we're complaining about the hyping of science, then I'm with you. I haven't been shy about my feelings, as someone finishing my PhD, about academia on here.