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Summarize and Reaction the readings (1,2,3,4,) Grant, A. M., & Pollock, T. G. (2011). From the Editors_Publishing in AMJ-Part 3: Setting the Hook. Academy of Management Journal, 54(5), 873-879. https://journals.aom.org/doi/epub/10.5465/amj.2011.4000The craft of research: chapter 16 (Page: 196 – 208)https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/48274_ch_3.pdfLinks to an external site.https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/theoreticalframeworkLinks to an external site. ***There are two main parts to the summary: *** 1. Summary of each chapter/article: Includes Title of Article, Author(s), Source, and Date of Article using APA style. In your OWN WORDS describe what the article is about, with major details or points, and should be easy to read (i.e. interesting and flow well!) 2. Reaction: Briefly describe the implications to scholars in academia (so what? in what ways you can utilize the ideas in the readings in your professional development as a scholar). ***Use easy words and easy Sentence***
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The Craft of Research
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3
The Craft of Research
Fourth Edition
Wayne C. Booth
Gregory G. Colomb
Joseph M. Williams
Joseph Bizup
William T. FitzGerald
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago & London
4
Wayne C. Booth (1921–2005) was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor
Emeritus in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. His books included The
Rhetoric of Fiction and For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals, both published by the
University of Chicago Press.
Gregory G. Colomb (1951–2011) was professor of English at the University of Virginia and the
author of Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic.
Joseph M. Williams (1933–2008) was professor in the Department of English Language and
Literature at the University of Chicago and the author of Style: Toward Clarity and Grace.
Joseph Bizup is associate professor in the Department of English at Boston University as well as
assistant dean and director of the College of Arts and Sciences Writing Program. He is the author of
Manufacturing Culture: Vindications of Early Victorian Industry.
William T. FitzGerald is associate professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University.
He is the author of Spiritual Modalities: Prayer as Rhetoric and Performance.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1995, 2003, 2008, 2016 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-23956-9 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-23973-6 (paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-23987-3 (e-book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226239873.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Booth, Wayne C., author. | Colomb, Gregory G., author. | Williams, Joseph M., author. |
Bizup, Joseph, 1966– author. | FitzGerald, William T., author.
Title: The craft of research / Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph
Bizup, William T. FitzGerald.
Other titles: Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing.
Description: Fourth edition. | Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Series: Chicago
guides to writing, editing, and publishing | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000143 | ISBN 9780226239569 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226239736
(pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226239873 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Research—Methodology. | Technical writing.
Classification: LCC Q180.55.M4 B66 2016 | DDC 001.4/2—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000143
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
5
Contents
Preface: The Aims of This Edition
Our Debts
I Research, Researchers, and Readers
Prologue: Becoming a Researcher
1 Thinking in Print: The Uses of Research, Public and Private
1.1 What Is Research?
1.2 Why Write It Up?
1.3 Why a Formal Paper?
1.4 Writing Is Thinking
2 Connecting with Your Reader: Creating a Role for Yourself and Your
Readers
2.1 Conversing with Your Readers
2.2 Understanding Your Role
2.3 Imagining Your Readers’ Role
★ Quick Tip: A Checklist for Understanding Your Readers
II Asking Questions, Finding Answers
Prologue: Planning Your Project—An Overview
★ Quick Tip: Creating a Writing Group
3 From Topics to Questions
3.1 From an Interest to a Topic
3.2 From a Broad Topic to a Focused One
3.3 From a Focused Topic to Questions
3.4 The Most Significant Question: So What?
★ Quick Tip: Finding Topics
4 From Questions to a Problem
4.1 Understanding Research Problems
4.2 Understanding the Common Structure of Problems
4.3 Finding a Good Research Problem
4.4 Learning to Work with Problems
★ Quick Tip: Manage the Unavoidable Problem of Inexperience
5 From Problems to Sources
5.1 Three Kinds of Sources and Their Uses
5.2 Navigating the Twenty-First-Century Library
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5.3 Locating Sources on the Internet
5.4 Evaluating Sources for Relevance and Reliability
5.5 Looking Beyond Predictable Sources
5.6 Using People to Further Your Research
★ Quick Tip: The Ethics of Using People as Sources of Data
6 Engaging Sources
6.1 Recording Complete Bibliographical Information
6.2 Engaging Sources Actively
6.3 Reading for a Problem
6.4 Reading for Arguments
6.5 Reading for Data and Support
6.6 Taking Notes
6.7 Annotating Your Sources
★ Quick Tip: Manage Moments of Normal Anxiety
III Making an Argument
Prologue: Assembling a Research Argument
7 Making Good Arguments: An Overview
7.1 Argument as a Conversation with Readers
7.2 Supporting Your Claim
7.3 Acknowledging and Responding to Anticipated Questions and Objections
7.4 Connecting Claims and Reasons with Warrants
7.5 Building a Complex Argument Out of Simple Ones
7.6 Creating an Ethos by Thickening Your Argument
★ Quick Tip: A Common Mistake—Falling Back on What You Know
8 Making Claims
8.1 Determining the Kind of Claim You Should Make
8.2 Evaluating Your Claim
8.3 Qualifying Claims to Enhance Your Credibility
9 Assembling Reasons and Evidence
9.1 Using Reasons to Plan Your Argument
9.2 Distinguishing Evidence from Reasons
9.3 Distinguishing Evidence from Reports of It
9.4 Evaluating Your Evidence
10 Acknowledgments and Responses
10.1 Questioning Your Argument as Your Readers Will
10.2 Imagining Alternatives to Your Argument
10.3 Deciding What to Acknowledge
10.4 Framing Your Responses as Subordinate Arguments
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10.5 The Vocabulary of Acknowledgment and Response
★ Quick Tip: Three Predictable Disagreements
11 Warrants
11.1 Warrants in Everyday Reasoning
11.2 Warrants in Academic Arguments
11.3 Understanding the Logic of Warrants
11.4 Testing Warrants
11.5 Knowing When to State a Warrant
11.6 Using Warrants to Test Your Argument
11.7 Challenging Others’ Warrants
★ Quick Tip: Reasons, Evidence, and Warrants
IV Writing Your Argument
Prologue: Planning Again
12 Planning and Drafting
12.1 Planning Your Paper
12.2 Avoiding Three Common but Flawed Plans
12.3 Turning Your Plan into a Draft
★ Quick Tip: Work Through Procrastination and Writer’s Block
13 Organizing Your Argument
13.1 Thinking Like a Reader
13.2 Revising Your Frame
13.3 Revising Your Argument
13.4 Revising the Organization of Your Paper
13.5 Checking Your Paragraphs
13.6 Letting Your Draft Cool, Then Paraphrasing It
★ Quick Tip: Abstracts
14 Incorporating Sources
14.1 Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing Appropriately
14.2 Integrating Direct Quotations into Your Text
14.3 Showing Readers How Evidence Is Relevant
14.4 The Social Importance of Citing Sources
14.5 Four Common Citation Styles
14.6 Guarding Against Inadvertent Plagiarism
★ Quick Tip: Indicating Citations in Your Paper
15 Communicating Evidence Visually
15.1 Choosing Visual or Verbal Representations
15.2 Choosing the Most Effective Graphic
15.3 Designing Tables, Charts, and Graphs
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15.4 Specific Guidelines for Tables, Bar Charts, and Line Graphs
15.5 Communicating Data Ethically
16 Introductions and Conclusions
16.1 The Common Structure of Introductions
16.2 Step 1: Establishing a Context
16.3 Step 2: Stating Your Problem
16.4 Step 3: Stating Your Response
16.5 Setting the Right Pace
16.6 Organizing the Whole Introduction
16.7 Finding Your First Few Words
16.8 Writing Your Conclusion
★ Quick Tip: Titles
17 Revising Style: Telling Your Story Clearly
17.1 Judging Style
17.2 The First Two Principles of Clear Writing
17.3 A Third Principle: Old Before New
17.4 Choosing between the Active and Passive Voice
17.5 A Final Principle: Complexity Last
17.6 Spit and Polish
★ Quick Tip: The Quickest Revision Strategy
V Some Last Considerations
The Ethics of Research
A Postscript for Teachers
Appendix: Bibliographical Resources
Index
9
Preface
The Aims of This Edition
This fourth edition of The Craft of Research is the first to appear since the
deaths of the book’s three original authors, Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G.
Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. In undertaking this revision, we—
Joseph Bizup and William T. FitzGerald—faced the pleasurable and
challenging task of reworking a book we have both long admired. Our goal
has been to update and refine it without appropriating it from its original
authors.
The fourth edition has the same main aim as the first three: to meet the
needs of all researchers, not just first-year undergraduates and advanced
graduate students, but even those in business and government who do and
report research on any topic, academic, political, or commercial. The book
was written to
• guide you through the complexities of turning a topic or question into a research
problem whose significance matches the effort that you put into solving it;
• help you organize and draft a report that justifies the effort;
• show you how to read your report as your readers will so that you can revise it into one
that they will read with the understanding and respect it deserves.
Other handbooks touch on these matters, but this one is different. Most
current guides acknowledge that researchers rarely move in a straight line
from finding a topic to stating a thesis to filling in note cards to drafting
and revision. Experienced researchers loop back and forth, move forward a
step or two before going back in order to move ahead again, change
directions, all the while anticipating stages not yet begun. But so far as we
know, no other guide tries to explain how each part of the process
influences all the others—how developing a project prepares the
researcher for drafting, how drafting can reveal problems in an argument,
how writing an introduction can prompt you to do more research.
In particular, the book tries to be explicit about matters that other guides
treat as a mysterious creative process beyond analysis and explanation,
including
• how to turn a vague interest into a problem readers think is worth posing and solving;
• how to build an argument that motivates readers to take your claim seriously;
• how to anticipate the reservations of thoughtful but critical readers and then respond
appropriately;
• how to create an introduction and conclusion answering that toughest of questions from
readers, So what?;
• how to read your own writing as readers will, and thereby know when and how to
revise it.
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Central in every chapter is the advice to side with your readers, to imagine
how they will judge what you have written.
The book addresses the formal elements common to most genres of
research-based writing not just because writers need to understand their
superficial shape but also because they help writers think. These genres—
the research paper, the research report, the white paper, and many others—
are not empty patterns or forms: they also embody and enable specific
ways of working and arguing; they help us all to develop and refine our
projects, test our work, and even discover new lines of thought. How we
write thus affects how we argue and research, and vice versa. In this sense,
to learn the genres of one’s field is to learn the field itself.
The book is informed by another conviction as well: that the skills of
research and research-based writing are not just for the elite but can be
learned by everyone. Some aspects of advanced research can be learned
only in the context of a specific community of researchers, but even if you
don’t yet belong to one, you can still create something like it on your own.
Our “Postscript for Teachers” suggests ways you (and your teachers) can
do that.
What This Edition Does Not Address
Like the previous editions of The Craft of Research, this fourth edition
treats research generally. It does not discuss how to incorporate narratives,
“thick descriptions,” or audiovisual forms of evidence into your
arguments. They are important topics, but too large for us to do justice to
them here. Nor does this edition cover research techniques that are specific
to particular fields. Likewise, while it discusses the principles that should
guide online research, it does not attempt to describe the vast array of
specialized search tools and databases now available online and through
the library. Our bibliography suggests a number of sources for guidance in
those areas.
What’s New in This Edition
In preparing this fourth edition, we have kept in mind the positive
reception of earlier editions and the wide audience they attracted, an
audience that ranges from first-year students in composition classes, to
graduate students and other advanced researchers, and even to
professionals working in fields such as business, medicine, and law.
Indeed, this audience is an international one: the book has been translated
into Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
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What we have been most mindful of is that The Craft of Research is the
result of an extraordinary collaboration among three gifted teachers and
scholars in whose footsteps we are proud to follow. While seeking to help
the book speak to new generations of researchers, we have also striven to
honor and retain the perspective, content, and voice that have made The
Craft of Research a recognized classic. Those who are familiar with earlier
editions will discover that this edition is faithful to the book’s vision and
overall structure. At the same time, each chapter has been thoroughly
updated to reflect the contemporary landscape of research.
Here, concretely, is what we’ve done:
• We revised chapters 5 and 6 to incorporate recent developments in library and Internet
research and in engaging source materials. Especially, we emphasized new research
techniques made possible by online databases and search engines and the value of
online sources, balanced by the need to assess these sources’ reliability.
• We again revised the chapter on warrants (chapter 11), a matter that has been difficult
to explain in previous editions.
• We moved the first two sections of chapter 13 into chapter 12, which is now titled
“Planning and Drafting,” and switched the order of chapters 13 and 14, now titled
“Organizing Your Argument” and “Incorporating Sources,” respectively.
• Throughout, as we thought necessary, we clarified concepts and provided fresh
examples.
• We differentiated the related but distinct activities of research, argument, and writing.
• Wherever possible, we standardized terms (e.g., using “paper” rather than “report”) to
reflect the range of academic and professional genres that are the products of research.
In doing all that, we have tried—as Booth, Colomb, and Williams did in
prior editions—to preserve the amiable voice, the sense of directness, and
the stance of colleagues working together that so many have found crucial
to the book’s success.
12
Our Debts
From JB and WF: We wish to thank our editor, David Morrow, and his
colleagues at the University of Chicago Press for their insight and
guidance and, above all, for the trust they placed in us to revise a text that
has no equal in the field. It was a labor of love.
We join Booth, Colomb, and Williams in again thanking the many
without whose help the previous editions could never have been realized,
especially Jane Andrew, Steve Biegel, and Donald Freeman. These many
include Jane Block, Don Brenneis, Sara Bryant, Diane Carothers, Sam
Cha, Tina Chrzastowski, John Cox, James Donato, Kristine Fowler, Joe
Harmon, Clara Lopez, Bill McClellan, Mark Monmonier, Nancy O’Brien,
Kim Steele, David Stern, Ellen Sutton, and Leslie Troutman.
Joe Bizup thanks his wife, Annmarie Caracansi, and daughters, Grace
and Charlotte; and Bill FitzGerald likewise thanks his wife, Emilia
Lievano, and daughter, Magdalena. We are both grateful for our respective
families’ love, patience, and support.
We allow Booth, Colomb, and Williams to once again offer their
personal acknowledgments in their own words.
From WCB (composed for the second edition): I am amazed as I think
back on my more than fifty years of teaching and research by how many
students and colleagues could be cited here as having diminished my
ignorance. Since that list would be too long, I’ll thank mainly my chief
critic, my wife, Phyllis, for her many useful suggestions and careful
editing. She and my daughters, Katherine Stevens and Alison Booth, and
their children, Robin, Emily, and Aaron, along with all those colleagues,
have helped me combat my occasional despair about the future of
responsible inquiry.
From GGC: I, too, have been blessed with students and colleagues who
have taught me much—first among them the hundreds of grad students
who shared with me their learning to be teachers. They, above all, have
shown me the possibilities in collaborative inquiry. What I lean on most,
though, are home and family: Sandra, Robin, Kikki, Karen, and Lauren.
Through turbulent times and calm, they gave point and purpose to it all.
Before them was another loving family, whose center, Mary, still sets an
example to which I can only aspire.
From JMW: The family has tripled in size since the first edition, and I
am ever more grateful for their love and support: Ol, Michele, and
Eleanor; Chris and Ingrid; Dave, Patty, Matilde, and Owen; Megan, Phil,
Lily, and Calvin; Joe, Christine, Nicholas, and Katherine. And at
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beginning and end, Joan, whose patience, love, and good sense flow still
more bountifully than I deserve.
14
In Memoriam
Wayne C. Booth
(1921–2005)
Gregory G. Colomb
(1951–2011)
Joseph M. Williams
(1933–2008)
15
Part I
Research, Researchers, and Readers
16
Prologue
Becoming a Researcher
WHO NEEDS RESEARCH?
When you think of a researcher, what do you imagine? Someone in a lab
coat peering into a microscope? A solitary figure taking notes in a library?
That’s what most people imagine. But you might have also pictured
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, HBO’s John Oliver, or anyone who prepares
extensively before writing or speaking. Like just about every successful
person, they are not only experts in doing research, but in using the
research of others. In fact, that’s part of what makes them successful. In an
aptly named “age of information,” they have learned not only how to find
information, but how to evaluate it, then how to report it clearly and
accurately. (Often, they challenge misinformation.) More than ever, those
skills are essential for success in any profession.
You may not yet be a professional, but learning to do research now will
help you today and prepare you for what’s to come. First, it will help you
understand what you read as nothing else will. You can accurately judge
the research of others only after you’ve done your own and can understand
the messy reality behind what is so smoothly and confidently presented in
your textbooks or by experts on TV. The Internet and cable TV flood us
with “facts” about the government, the economy, the environment, and the
products we buy. Some of these facts are sound, though many are not.
That’s why, as you learn to do research, you’ll also learn to value reliable
research reported clearly and accurately.
You’ll discover both how new knowledge depends on what questions
you ask and how the way you think about and communicate your research
shapes those questions and your answers. Most important, you’ll come to
understand how the knowledge we all rely on depends on the quality of the
research that supports it and the accuracy of its reporting. Although some
might think it idealistic, another reason for doing research is the sheer
pleasure of solving a puzzle, of discovering something that no one else
knows.
But learning to do research is not like learning to ride a bike, the sort of
thing you learn once and never forget. Each of us has started projects that
forced us to rethink how we do our work. Whenever we’ve addressed a
new research community, we’ve had to learn its ways to help us
understand what its members think is important. But even then, we could
still rely on principles that all researchers follow, principles that we
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describe in this book. We think you will find them useful as your projects
and readers become more demanding, both in school and after.
We must be candid, though: doing research carefully and reporting it
clearly are hard work, consisting of many tasks, often competing for your
attention at the same time. And no matter how carefully you plan, research
follows a crooked path, taking unexpected turns, sometimes up blind
alleys, even looping back on itself. As complex as that process is, we will
work through it step-by-step so that you can see how its parts work
together. When you can manage its parts, you can manage the often
intimidating whole and look forward to doing more research with greater
confidence.
STARTING A RESEARCH PROJECT
If you are beginning your first project, the task may seem overwhelming:
How do I focus on a topic? Where do I find information on it? What do I
do when I find it? Even if you’ve done a “research paper” in a writing
class, the idea of another may be even more intimidating if this time it’s
the real thing. If so, you’re not alone. Even experienced researchers feel
anxious when they tackle a new kind of project for a new audience. So
whatever anxiety you feel, most researchers have felt it too. The difference
is that experienced researchers know what lies ahead—hard work, but also
pleasure; some frustration, but more satisfaction; periods of confusion, but
confidence that, in the end, it will all come together and that the result is
worth the effort. Most of all, experienced researchers know how to get
from start to finish not easily, perhaps, but as efficiently as the complexity
of their task allows. That’s the aim of this book.
WORKING WITH A PLAN
You will struggle with your project if you don’t know what readers look
for in a paper or how to help them find it. Experienced researchers know
that they most often produce a sound paper when they have a plan, no
matter how rough, even if only in their heads. In fact, they create two
kinds of plans: the first helps them prepare and conduct their research; the
second helps them draft their paper.
They usually begin with a question and a plan to guide their search for
an answer. They may not know exactly what they’ll find, but they know
generally what it will look like, even if it surprises them. They also know
that once they have an answer, they don’t just start writing, any more than
an experienced carpenter just starts sawing. They draw up a second plan, a
18
rough blueprint for a first draft—maybe no more than a sketch of an
outline. Shrewd researchers, though, don’t let that plan box them in: they
change it if they run into a problem or discover something that leads them
in a new direction. But before they start a first draft, they begin with some
plan, even when they know they’ll almost certainly change it.
That plan for a draft helps researchers write, but it also helps their
readers read. In fact, researchers of all kinds use standard forms to
anticipate what readers look for:
• A newspaper reporter writes her story in traditional “pyramid” form, putting the most
important information first, not just to make her job of drafting easier, but also so that
her readers can find the gist of the news quickly, then decide whether to read on.
• An accountant follows a standard form for her audit report not just to organize her own
writing, but so that investors can find the information they need to decide whether the
company is another Enron or the next Apple.
• A Food and Drug Administration scientist follows the predictable form for a scientific
report—introduction, methods and materials, results, discussion, conclusion—not just
to order his own thoughts coherently, but to help readers find the specific issues they
have to consider before they accept his findings.
Within these forms, or genres, writers are free to emphasize different
ideas, to put a personal stamp on their work. But they know that a plan
helps them write efficiently and, no less important, helps their readers read
productively.
This book will help you create and execute a plan for doing your
research and another for reporting it in ways that not only encourage your
best thinking but help your readers see its value.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
The best way to deal with the complexity of research (and its anxieties) is
to read this book twice. First skim it to understand what lies ahead (flip
past what seems tedious or confusing). But then as you begin your work,
carefully read the chapters relevant to your immediate task. If you are new
to research, reread from the beginning. If you are in an intermediate course
but not yet at home in your field, skim part I, then concentrate on the rest.
If you are an experienced researcher, you will find chapter 4 and parts III
and IV most useful.
In part I, we address what those undertaking their first project must
think about deliberately: why readers expect us to write up our research in
particular ways (chapter 1), and why you should think of your project not
as solitary labor but as a conversation with those whose work you read and
with those who will in turn read your work (chapter 2).
In part II, we discuss how to frame and develop your project. We
19
explain
• how to find a topic in an interest, then how to focus and question it (chapter 3);
• how to transform those questions into a research problem (chapter 4);
• how to find sources to guide your search for answers (chapter 5);
• how to engage sources in ways that encourage your own best thinking (chapter 6).
In part III, we discuss how to assemble a sound case in support of your
claim. That includes
• an overview of a research argument (chapter 7);
• how to evaluate your claim for its significance (chapter 8);
• how to judge what count as good reasons and sound evidence (chapter 9);
• how to acknowledge and respond to questions, objections, and alternative views
(chapter 10);
• how to make the logic of your argument clear (chapter 11).
In part IV, we lay out the steps in producing your paper:
• how to plan and execute a first draft (chapter 12);
• how to test and revise it (chapter 13);
• how to incorporate sources (chapter 14);
• how to present complex quantitative evidence clearly and pointedly (chapter 15);
• how to write an introduction and conclusion that convince readers your argument is
worth their time (chapter 16);
• how to edit your style to make it clear, direct, and readable (chapter 17).
Between some of the chapters you will find “Quick Tips,” brief sections
that complement the chapters with practical advice.
In an afterword, “The Ethics of Research,” we reflect on a matter that
goes beyond professional competence. Doing and reporting research is a
social activity with ethical implications. We often read about the dishonest
research of historians, scientists, stock analysts, and others. And we see
plagiarism among writers at all levels of achievement, from secondaryschool students to leaders of their professions. Such events highlight the
importance of doing and using your research ethically.
In a concluding essay, we address those who teach research. At the end
of the book is a bibliography of sources for beginning researchers and for
advanced researchers in particular fields.
Research is hard work, but like any challenging job done well, both its
process and its results can bring great satisfaction. No small part of that
satisfaction comes from knowing that your work sustains the fabric of a
community of people who share your interests, especially when you
discover something that you believe can improve your readers’ lives by
changing what and how they think.
20
1 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
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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,
