Some of the researchers that I work with read a lot, which I encourage and admire, but also have a tendency to be swept up by whatever trend appears and want to follow that trend and start to conduct research in that area. The latter is something that I am very wary of for three reasons. The primary one is that jumping into a “hot” field tends to lead to swimming in a red ocean as everyone and their brother is doing the same. So, the competition will be fierce and it’s hard to have real, tangible contributions that stand out. The second is that by the time you have heard of it, the “in-crowd” has been working on the topic for a long time already and what looks like new, fresh and exciting is already old, chewed through and established. The third and most important reason is that it tends to lead to the shiny bumper syndrome. The syndrome was defined in the 1950s when cars had chrome bumpers and some dogs got agitated by the sunlight reflecting off moving cars and chased them. Of course, the moment the car took a turn, the reflection disappeared and the dog would find another car to chase. Jumping on trends will easily cause a situation where you jump on the next one the moment you become aware of it. And that means you never get real work done as you never go deep enough and stay with it long enough. As my reflection for today: do you have any shiny bumper syndromes in your life?