Thinking in Print

The Uses of Research, Public and Private

In this chapter, we define research, then discuss how you benefit from learning to do it well, why we value it, and why we hope you will too.

Whenever we read about a scientific breakthrough or a crisis in world affairs, we benefit from the research of those who report it, who in turn benefited from the research of countless others. When we walk into a library, we are surrounded by more than twenty-five centuries of research. When we go on the Internet, we can read millions of reports written by researchers who have posed questions beyond number, gathered untold amounts of information from the research of others to answer them, then shared their answers with the rest of us so that we can carry on their work by asking new questions and, we hope, answering them.

Teachers at all levels devote their lives to research. Governments spend billions on it, businesses even more. Research goes on in laboratories and libraries, in jungles and ocean depths, in caves and in outer space, in offices and, in the information age, even in our own homes. Research is in fact the world's biggest industry. Those who cannot do it well or evaluate that of others will find themselves sidelined in a world increasingly dependent on sound ideas based on good information produced by trustworthy inquiry and then presented clearly and accurately.

Without trustworthy published research, we all would be locked in the opinions of the moment, prisoners of what we alone experience or dupes to whatever we're told. Of course, we want to believe that our opinions are sound. Yet mistaken ideas, even dangerous ones, flourish because too many people accept too many opinions based on too little evidence. And as recent events have shown, those who act on unreliable evidence can lead us — indeed have led us — into disaster.

That's why in this book we will urge you to be amiably skeptical of the research you read, to question it even as you realize how much you depend on it.

1.1 WHAT IS RESEARCH?

In the broadest terms, we do research whenever we gather information to answer a question that solves a problem:

PROBLEM: Where do I find a new head gasket for my '65 Mustang?

RESEARCH: Look in the yellow pages for an auto-parts store, then call to see if it has one in stock.

PROBLEM: To settle a bet, I need to know when Michael Jordan was born.

RESEARCH: You Google "Michael Jordan birthday."

PROBLEM: I'm just curious about a new species of fish.

RESEARCH: You search the Internet for articles in newspapers and academic journals.

We all do that kind of research every day, and though we rarely write it up, we rely on those who wrote up theirs: Jordan's biographers, the fish discoverers, the publishers of the yellow pages and the catalogs of the auto-parts suppliers — they all wrote up their research because they knew that one day someone would have a question that they could answer.

If you're preparing to do a research project not because you want to but because it's been assigned, you might think that it is just make-work and treat it as an empty exercise. We hope you won't. Done well, your project prepares you to join the oldest and most esteemed of human conversations, one conducted for millennia among philosophers, engineers, biologists, social scientists, historians, literary critics, linguists, theologians, not to mention CEOs, lawyers, marketers, investment managers — the list is endless.

Right now, if you are a beginner, you may feel that the conversation is one-sided, that you have to listen more than you can speak because you have little to contribute. If you are a student, you may feel that you have only one reader: your teacher. All that may be true, for the moment. But at some point, you will join a conversation that, at its best, can help you and your community free us from ignorance, prejudice, and the half-baked ideas that so many charlatans try to impose on us. It is no exaggeration to say that, maybe not today or tomorrow but one day, the research you do and the arguments you make using it can improve if not the whole world, then at least your corner of it.

1.2 WHY WRITE IT UP?

For some of you, though, the invitation to join this conversation may still seem easy to decline. If you accept it, you'll have to find a good question, search for sound data, formulate and support a good answer, and then write it all up. Even if you turn out a first-rate paper, it may be read not by an eager world but only by your teacher. And, besides, you may think, my teacher knows all about my topic. What do I gain from writing up my research, other than proving I can do it?

One answer is that we write not just to share our work, but to improve it before we do.

1.2.1 Write to Remember

Experienced researchers first write just to remember what they've read. A few talented people can hold in mind masses of information, but most of us get lost when we think about what Smith found in light of Wong's position, and compare both to the odd data in Brunelli, especially as they are supported by Boskowitz — but what was it that Smith said? When you don't take notes on what you read, you're likely to forget or, worse, misremember it.

1.2.2 Write to Understand

A second reason for writing is to see larger patterns in what you read. When you arrange and rearrange the results of your research in new ways, you discover new implications, connections, and complications. Even if you could hold it all in mind, you would need help to line up arguments that pull in different directions, plot out complicated relationships, sort out disagreements among experts. I want to use these claims from Wong, but her argument is undercut by Smith's data. When I put them side by side, I see that Smith ignores this last part of Wong's argument. Aha! If I introduce it with this part from Brunelli, I can focus on Wong more clearly. That's why careful researchers never put off writing until they've gathered all the data they need: they write from the start of their projects to help them assemble their information in new ways.

1.2.3 Write to Test Your Thinking

A third reason to write is to get your thoughts out of your head...