Research methodology

“ Again, your training here has shown you how needful it is in scientific research to adopt thorough and exhaustive methods of procedure. The conditions to be taken into account are so numerous and complex, the possible combinations so manifold, before a satisfactory conclusion can be reached. A laborious collection of facts must be made. ”

“ It is also true that few scientists would adopt the practice-based research methodologies seen among live-art researchers, for instance. That said, although different methodologies in the humanities and sciences may be thought of as respectively more subjective or objective, each is also concerned with fostering intersubjective understandings through repetition, whether that be through persuasive argument or hypothesis-driven experimentation. ”

“ We may call it analytical research work. The other kind is that done by the man of clear vision and wide outlook, mature enough to see that the analytical work is merely material for a bigger thing—call it what you will—the man who can take the information others have collected and impart it in the form of culture. ”

“ It is in the intermediate period that the opportunity is offered of extended research into the records of science, of confirming or correcting the results of reading and study by observation, of making original investigations into the worlds of matter and of thought, and thus bringing forth to the light truths which may benefit mankind, and at the same time serve as the basis of honor and success to their discoverer. ”

“ There is much data of such nature that we still need and for which our research men are diligently seeking. With the results of their work we shall every year be able to have a better understanding of current conditions. ”

“ All science is based upon experience and consists in subjecting the data furnished by the senses to a rational method of investigation. Induction, analysis, comparison, observation, experiment, are the chief instruments of such a rational method. ”

“ But these desirable results cannot be effected by invention based upon insufficient knowledge; invention must be preceded by general as well as special research, because the former often discloses important truths which we cannot predict. ”

“ Given the abundance of data, research on research (i.e., meta-research) can derive empirical estimates of the prevalence of risk factors for high false-positive rates (underpowered studies; small effect sizes; low pre-study odds; flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, analyses; biases and conflicts of interest; bandwagon patterns; and lack of collaboration) [3] . Currently, an estimated 85% of research resources are wasted [5] .
Effective Interventions
We need effective interventions to improve the credibility and efficiency of scientific investigation. ”

“ One of the earliest results of an approach to business in an attitude of scientific research, is the discovery that there are certain fundamental principles which are alike for all lines of business, however diverse the subject-matter to which analysis is applied. ”

“ But for the particular purpose of conducting discovery with a view to ascertainment of fact, the latter relations are fundamental. The more one emphasizes organization as a mark of science, then, the more he is committed to a recognition of the primacy of method in the definition of science. ”

“ Is there not too much emphasis laid by many professors in charge of research students on the mere accumulation of observational, statistical, or experimental facts, with too little attention to that side of science which concerns itself with those analytical and synthetic processes that convert facts into valuable ideas? ”

“ Further, logic having for its chief business the methodology of science, the development of knowledge from empirical data, it ought to include a theory of knowledge, but it should not so far depart from its subjective limits as to include within its province the discussion of metaphysical implications or a theory of being. ”

“ Research defines its problem by isolating certain facts which appear for the time being not as the sense-data of a solipsistic mind, but as experiences of an individual in a highly organized society,207 facts which, because they are in conflict with accepted doctrines, must be described so that they can be experienced by others under like conditions. The ground for the analysis which leads to such facts is found in the conflict between the accepted theory and the experience of the individual scientist. ”

“ This is a good illustration of the fact that some way can always be found of making practical, everyday use of complicated scientific data, which appears to be beyond the experience and the range of the technical training of ordinary practical men. ”

“ We see in many of the brute creation the exercise of one, at least, of the same powers of reasoning as that which we ourselves employ.
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. ”

“ Research efforts are embedded in wider societies, which have provided scientific developments that differ according to time period and location. What can be done to enhance the capacity of science to flourish and to assess and promote this capacity across cultures that may vary in attitudes toward skepticism, inquisitiveness, and contrarian reasoning? ”

“ The general aspect in which scientific research is viewed by many persons in this country, is that of a refined intellectual pursuit, which may be encouraged and honoured for the purpose of maintaining the tone of society. ”

“ RESEARCH is now an accepted aspect of all phases of human life and activity. Research is a recognized occupation. Research teams solve problems, map the paths of enterprise. We are learning first to think, then, only after careful study, decide on courses of action and follow them through.
6. The field of inquiry and research covered the entire range of human experience. Information, resulting from research, provided the subject matter of new sciences. In the new fields new skills were developed and new professions built up. ”

“ The subject of our research is the individual human being.
1. The Objective Collecting of Single Facts.—In the gathering of data, our science makes use of two means of investigation, as we have already seen: observation or anthroposcopy; and measurement or anthropometry. In order to take measurements, we must know the special anthropometric instruments and how to use them; and in making observations, we must treat ourselves as instruments, that is, we must divest ourselves of our own personality, of every preconception, in order to become capable of recording the real facts objectively. ”

“ To survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate comprehensive projects of research, and to develop effective means of utilizing the scientific and technical resources of the country for dealing with these projects. ”

“ The commercial argument in favour of encouraging research, although the most effective with the great mass of persons, and therefore much dwelt upon in this chapter, is however quite a secondary one; the encouragement of truth for the sake of its own intrinsic worth, in preference to the material or extrinsic value of its results, should be the foundation of all aid to discovery. ”

“ Indeed the borderlands of any science, the points where it joins with another, now make up the most interesting and promising fields of research. Thus biology at one angle passes over into medicine, at another into psychology, at another into sociology, one little corner threatens to join with mathematics, and at nearly every turn it meets with physics and chemistry. ”

“ Do not some of the standard methods which are familiar in the descriptions or criticisms of scientific discovery, such as ‘reasoning from the known to the unknown’, ‘the adoption of a working hypothesis’, ‘the scientific use of the imagination’, often resolve themselves on analysis into the simple process of being struck by an analogy and being led by it to adopt an explanation or to try an experiment suggested by it? ”

“ The chief difficulties to be overcome in this, as in all other plans of aiding research, are to find a sufficient number of influential persons acquainted with the subject to practically carry out the plan; to secure investigators of high ability ”

“ We have reason to hope that the empirical processes which are at present employed will be replaced by scientific methods, the trustworthiness of which no one will be able to put in doubt, and the efficacy of which will endure every test. ”

“ It is a very great advantage, in such a mode of exhibiting scientific truths, that it resolves the verification of the most complex and comprehensive theories, into a number of small steps, of which almost any one falls within the reach of common talents and industry. That if the particulars of any one step be true, the generalization also is true, any person with a mind properly disciplined may satisfy himself by a little study. ”

“ Its object as a study is not to add to or to modify these materials, but to afford some coherent and systematic satisfaction for the intellectual curiosity which we all feel at times as to the general nature of the whole to which these various materials belong, and the relative truth and clearness with which that general nature is expressed in the different departments of experience. Its aim is the organisation, not the enlargement of knowledge. ”

“ All systematic knowledge involves much that is not practical, yet it is the only kind of knowledge which satisfies the mind, and systematic study proves, in the long-run, the easiest way of acquiring and retaining facts which are practical. ”

“ General argument and information of all kinds may properly be employed in designing and choosing the best experiments, but specific experience on a limited scale and in closely proximate circumstances is the only sure guide in the complex questions of social science. ”

“ Both these books, as channels by which the experimental labours of each investigator reached the prepared and instructed public, exercised at once, and have continued ever since to exercise, an enormous effect on thought as well as on knowledge. They transformed the methods by which man approaches scientific investigation, and while they instructed they stimulated a new ardour for instruction. ”

“ And, in truth, there is scarcely any investigation in the whole body of a science requiring so high a degree of analysis and abstraction, as the inquiry, what the science itself is; in other words, what are the properties common to all the truths composing it, and distinguishing them from all other truths. ”

“ For evidence in favour of this view we must take a rapid survey of the whole domain of human science, and test the chief departments of it to see how far they contain, on the one hand, objective knowledge and facts, and on the other, subjective knowledge and hypotheses. ”

“ The preliminary discrimination of method is the distribution of all phenomena among certain grand divisions.
⁠7. It is of vital importance to discriminate between a division of phenomena for purposes of study, and a separation of the phenomena thernselves.
⁠8. Since the sciences deal with different aspects of the same objective world, it follows that they must cooperate to give a complete account of reality.
⁠9. Scientific method has been developed historically first in application to inorganic phenomena, then to organic life, more recently to psychical and social phenomena. ”

“ The spirit represented by these new special studies is the spirit of science; that is to say, in each department the aim is to ascertain the facts as correctly as possible, and, when the range of facts has become large enough to warrant generalisation, to deduce general rules or principles, with a view to making the further study of the subject a methodical and, as far as possible, an exact study. ”

“ To put it most briefly, the method of science differs from the method of other orders of thought in the necessity for arranging the various stages of investigation in such a way that two possibilities are always open. In the first place, it must be possible for every member of the scientific fraternity, present and future, to retrace and repeat every vital step in any and every investigation, from simple concrete observation right up to the largest generalisation. ”

“ Now in such a case it is requisite that science, that theory, be available at every step of the undertaking, and this in the most detailed way. Every stage of the proceeding must, indeed, be absolutely controlled by scientific method. ”

“ Although we cannot always isolate our factors, control our processes, and otherwise apply scientific method, with results as conclusive as those obtained in laboratories of chemistry, physics, or biology, we need not therefore reject scientific method in favor of a rule-of-thumb. ”

“ They soon recognized that science is knowledge gained by certain methods of abstraction. Data had to be systematically collected, digested, classified, and impartially studied. The results of such studies had to be assembled and expressed in the most useful forms. Progress had to be made by the trial and error method and the results of experiments tested by synthesis as well as analysis; by induction as well as deduction. ”

“ Such matters as knowledge of the past, of current technique, of materials, of the ways in which one's own best results are assured, supply the material for what may be called general method. There exists a cumulative body of fairly stable methods for reaching results, a body authorized by past experience and by intellectual analysis, which an individual ignores at his peril. ”

“ The doctrine of methods comprises a general treatment, which corresponds to what we called the Mother-Science, and a particular treatment for the individual sciences. There is methodology of learning in general, and there are methodics for the several disciplines, or at least for each group of disciplines, into which learning is divided and subdivided in accordance with the logical processes adopted in any particular case, or in accordance with the objects of these disciplines. ”