What is a good research project?
This is a question that gets asked often enough. The broad concept of a good research project, although universally understood and accepted per se, differs in the minutae across the disciplines and depends strongly on time.
One striking example is the following observation in Gribbin’s “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat” regarding the quality of research in quantum mechanics: “Back then, (the 1920′s and 30′s) it was easy for a second rate physicist to do first rate work; nowadays, it’s hard even for first rate physicists to get second rate work.” The implicit notion of “first rate research” seems to be the following: it is a project which makes a major advance in the concerned field.
Hence, the poor “first rate” physicists today would get half as much credit as they would ideally deserve, at least in the 30′s. Why call them first-rate physicists then? Their claim to the epithet, and this may be apparent to the reader, rests on their grasp of the subject in general. Their contributions represent, for the most part, an important incremental advance in the field. I do mean incremental, but not major. Their work may improve the state-of-the-art, but the field could nevertheless do without the improvement. This brings us to a more contemporary notion of good research: it helps make important incremental advances in the state of the art.
I am aware of two other notions of good research:
- It creates a revolution or a paradigm shift. This notion does not fit into either of the two above, and is the most widely perceived and imagined notion outside the technical community and occasionally even within.
- It can elicit interest in the community at large and find application in the real world. For the first time, we have talked about the application of an idea rather than a knowledge of the idea itself.
There are probably other notions of good research, not far removed from the four stated here, but let me leave them aside and bring two points to the reader’s attention. First, all four notions concern the end product. Second, they all relate to an entire field or a sub-field, but never to an individual or his aspirations. In other words, the concept of good research has a very consumerist dimension. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard people dismiss projects as “reinventing the wheel.”
This brings me to a more personal part of this post: my own notions of good research.
- I prefer to take a more individual-centric perspective. For me, a good research problem is one which grows an individual’s knowledge base and strengthens its foundations. As an example,consider the “first rate physicists struggling to conduct second rate research” in the above anecdote.
- The research problem should be grounded in experiments or in rigorous observations of nature whenever possible.
- The research should be in keeping with the highest standards of morality and integrity. Ethics are insufficient in my opinion because more often than not, they do not evaluate specific long-term effects of the research such as its potential to harm the nature.
- Lastly, should the research be judged by an end product which is a deliverable, the product should satisfy all assumptions and meet all specifications laid at the outset. Novelty, in my opinion, does not constitute the specifications. It is merely the culmination of the effort, the driving assumptions and the circumstances.
