Michael Huang says that humans are scientifically useless. Taylor Dinerman says that (despite the uselessness of humans) solar physics is important (for those concerned with such things, ignore the demonic nature of the link URL). And Jeff writes about Bob Bigelow's excellent rodeo adventure. (Other good stuff there as well, wander around the site.)

Michael Huang believes (as do I) that Robert Park is also obsolete.

I'd like to extend my hand and welcome Michael Huang to the reality based community.

There is only so many nematodes that you can carry into zero gravity aboard the space shuttle at $1B a mission until nothing new can be learned. I think we pretty much passed that point in the 1980's.

Huang doesn't understand or mention that humans are very expensive to keep in space to do science. They need to breathe and drink and eat and shit an require a controlled pressure, temperature, acceleration and radiation and finally must return to Earth. While on Earth, their natural environment, they are still easily cost effective in many scientific endeavours, since the planet provides a large portion of these requirements for free or very cheaply.
Still, even on Earth, humans are not the most cost effective everywhere. For example, in some deep sea exploration, teleoperated robots can be much better and they are indeed used.

Hush, mz. You're spoiling Huang's strawman.

Kurt: Robert Park committed the unforgivable sin of being correct. And since he can't be rebutted, he must be demonized.

They are however very good for loading and unloading experiments in zero gravity and placing them into racks. I think in about ten years though robotics will have advanced to the point where they aren't even viable for doing that.