5 Signs That You Are a Good Researcher
By: Sruthi Korlakunta
Tags: Publishing, Research, Research And Development, Science, Scientific Method

5 Signs That You Are a Good Researcher

Do you have the guts to speak the insignificant truth?

Are you a counterfeit? Photo by Ystallonne Alves on Unsplash

There are researchers who love their work, and there are those who only love the glory that comes with it.

Ironically, you can only do one of these two things truthfully. Most of the time, the scientific process brings mildly satisfying results, if any at all, and only once in a century, there comes a groundbreaking revelation that is capable of turning heads and breaking hearts.

If you are a researcher, the odds are that you are helping the world massively, but it probably feels like your research is just a tiny drop in the ocean. This is absolutely normal.

The “Ugg”ly truth

To say something as simple as “Hence we conclude that your Uggs wear out half a millimeter over 150 km” needs the poor researcher to wear those Uggs and walk for thousands of kilometers and measure the thickness possibly every 10km. Not to mention the years he spends walking around with a notebook on all possible terrains to be able to generalize every word in that sentence.

Even then, he is only sure of this particular result with a man his weight and walking style. So he calls in 50 college students, pays them 12 bucks each, and walks them around with uggs and kilometer-trackers after taking their height weight and getting them to walk on a treadmill to classify walking style.

Sigh. Such is science.

Diamonds in the Rough

In the scientific community, it is not uncommon to find blasphemous deviants to the truth and process willing to conclude that “Uggs might cause cancer” just because that paper has a better chance of being read. (No, Uggs don't give you cancer. Actually, I don't know if they do).

Financial expert William J Bernstein rightly identifies a genuine scientific process as one of the central pillars for civilization to exist (Birth of plenty). In Order to keep civilization on its road to progress, it is necessary to weed out the deviants. Here is a beginners checklist to see if you are a good researcher:

1. The Disclaimer

Do you see that line in a research paper? It says :

“The current results may vary when performed under different circumstances. Further research may be needed to generalize the results and establish the conclusions.”

That disclaimer is NOT a legal obligation. It is a heart-felt truth that makes the researcher think even in his sleep, “I hope people don't jump to conclusions based on my paper.” Be this guy. Disclaim loud and clear.

2. You swept nothing under the carpet

Did you perform an experiment 20 times, but you got the expected results only thrice? So you titled your paper saying “Verified thrice” and silently swept 17 attempts under the carpet? Don’t be this guy. All 20 of your attempts need to see daylight. The 17 falses bring science forward as much as the 3 trues.

3. You err in the direction of less glory

Do you have an ambiguous discovery, that in one sentence, looks like you discovered the proof for the existence of god and in another means that you wasted 8 years of your life?

Don’t choose to say, “The results are very close to being almost statistically significant that there exists a God that cares about you.”

Say instead, “It could not be shown with this experiment with a significant probability that there exists a God. More research and replication is needed to establish the result.” (Note that there is a difference between it could not be shown that there is God, and there is no God).

4. Your results can be replicated

That brings us to replication. If a research result is claiming something to be true, it should be possible to replicate it. It is painful to spend time doing what has been done and to say, “What was true last year is still true.” Even more so when you have to replicate it multiple times.

The future of civilizational credibility of science rests on being able to replicate. Dust those replicated experiments, publish them and affirm replicability.

5. You are terrified of ambiguous language

Significance of a result should mean to you that “The experiment would rarely fail to deliver the expected results.” Not that it “Has at least once delivered the expected results.” If you see language in a paper that does not establish case 1 above, you should have your doubts. If you are writing a paper yourself, you should make black and white conclusions only when you establish case 1. If your result belongs to case 2, you should make sure that you publish them with clear disambiguation as to what you really intend. Say, don't imply.