Ok ok, the thing about the wobbling plate is that Feynman says the freedom to investigate a question that was only interesting to him was what led him to get the Nobel prize. Here's an excerpt from his book that's faster to process than the video I linked to:

http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html

But otherwise, I think we basically agree. Mostly I thought you were talking about the SF vs. NY thing and this article, not about inane investigations into arbitrary correlations (e.g., Is there a relationship between the number of steps someone takes per day and the number of spoons in their apartment? - well, actually, there probably is, especially if you start taking away knives and forks too). The most important thing I guess is to have a question that the researcher is interested in answering.