From: mike@psych.ualberta.ca (Mike Dawson)
Subject: Re: Scientific research.
Keywords: NLP NeuroLinguistic Programming
Organization: Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton
Distribution: sci
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 22:24:36 GMT

lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady) writes:

[...lots of stuff deleted...]
>And the one rule that is paramount in deciding what questions to investigate 
>is...  We investigate the questions which we know how to and do not 
>investigate the ones we don't know how to.  This is a trivial 
>observation, but I think it's important for scientists not to start believing 
>their own bullshit and thinking that the topics on which research is done 
>are the ones which have the most intrinsic significance.  

However, one rule precedes the one cited above -- what questions are
interesting?  Once one decides which questions are interesting, then
one decides which are tractable.  In general, very few researchers
investigate questions that they know how to answer, but which don't
interest them.

>Whenever we get into these arguments about NLP it seems impossible to break 
>through this attitude that only the scientific bottom line matters, that only 
>the tip of the scientific iceberg is important.  Over and over again, when 
>I try to explain that something is *interesting* the same response comes 
>back:  "Your opinions and your personal experiences are not evidence."  Shit, 
>man, I know they're not evidence.  I'm not claiming that I'm presenting a 
>neat, rigorous, and organized piece of science worthy of being published 
>in a refereed journal.  I'm trying to direct your attention to an area 
>where there is something interesting, an opportunity for research.  

I think you might be missing the point of these responses.  "Your opinions
and your personal experiences are not sufficient evidence to interest me
in researching NLP".  In certain respects, your approach to enticing
clinical research misses the mark.  How much work is initiated by having
someone say "here's a topic that I'M really interested in -- so why don't
YOU investigate it?".  More typical is "here's a topic that I'M really
interested in -- and here's some interesting stuff that I'VE found
out about it".  As more and more of the 'interesting stuff' accumulates,
then you get other researchers getting interested in it for THEMSELVES,
mapping out a set of questions that interest them, and then attempting
to answer the tractable ones.

>Every once in a while, the thought occurs to me that almost all academic 
>research (except one's own, of course!) exists primarily as a form of busy 
>work to keep scientists occupied.  

The key point here is bracketed.  Academics find their own line of
research interesting and important, because they're asking interesting
questions that they think they can answer.  Trying to communicate that
sense of enthusiasm, importance, and interest to others is usually
fruitless -- see, for instance, the kinds of responses to NLP that
you often receive here.

>I used to think that this failure of vision, this inclination to continually 
>pursue minor refinements of existing lines of research instead of looking for 
>significant new areas to investigate, and the inability to see beyond the 
>scientific bottom line... was a result of the pressures of the 
>academic world.  And to a large extent I still believe that.  

What exactly is "this failure of vision" and "the scientific bottom line"?
In cognitive science in general, one finds lots of innovation -- new and
exciting ideas proposed by academics.  "Minor refinements of existing lines
of research" is a rather pessimistic view -- why not "answers to questions
that particular researchers find interesting"?  Again, one gets the sense
that you're simply not sharing in the enthusiasm and interest that others
have in their particular research topic.

>In principle, the ivory tower idea sounds great:  Free scientists from the 
>pressure of having to produce commercially useful results so that they can 
>work on questions which are really important.  The only thing is, the 
>pressure to produce publishable papers proves to be even more insidious.  
>The primary consideration in choosing what to investigate becomes having 
>a fair assurance that one will be able to get publishable results fairly 
>quickly.  

No doubt that this is true.  But I think that this only speaks to the
issue of tractable questions.  It's orthogonal to the issue of what
questions are interesting.

>What is so amazing to me in these discussions in sci.psychology is the
>lack of *curiosity* on the part of scientists.  The idea of looking
>into a subject for the purpose of learning something, of increasing
>one's understanding and insight without necessarily getting a
>publication out of it... seems to have become hopelessly old
>fashioned.  It seems that back at the time when the scientists we now
>venerate were wild and crazy kids, sometimes doing incredibly risky
>things and outraging their scientific elders by their disrespect for
>established methodology...  it seems that if one told one of those
>scientists about something very remarkable he might have said "That
>seems very strange to me.  I don't think that should happen.  I think
>I'll try that out myself."

Much of the research that I'm aware of develops in exactly this fashion.

--
Michael R.W. Dawson                       email: mike@psych.ualberta.ca
Biological Computation Project, Department of Psychology
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB CANADA T6G 2E9
Tel:  +1 403 492 5175   Fax: +1 403 492 1768
Newsgroups: sci.psychology