For New Research Students: How to Stop Floundering

I must admit that I was in the middle of my post-doctoral fellowship (at UCL) before I fully realised what research involves. It suddenly clicked while I was desperately trying to learn clay chemistry in order to work out a rather intractable problem of erosional landscapes. How on earth had I managed to get through all the previous stages?

Having decided to embark on a research project, the first big hurdle is “how do I do this?” or “what do I do next?” Obviously, it is a bigger problem for PhD theses than for  a one-year master’s, in which less than half of the year is devoted to the thesis. I defined my own PhD as one year of optimism, one year of desperation and one year of salvaging something from the wreckage (but I did get it done in three years and got it passed by the examiners with minor amendments).

I often see students floundering in those early stages. The question of “how to define a research project and get on with it” can feel like a slippery cliff face on which there are no hand- and toe-holds. Here are some reflections on how to get to grips with the problem.

If there is one thing you need to learn first and foremost, it is clear, logical thinking: thinking that is unencumbered by “ifs” and “buts” and “also”. Thinking with a logical progression: A leads to B leads to C. Develop a framework based on logical connections between the parts. One key word is ‘feasibility’. If your investigation takes a particular direction, can it be done in three years? Is it likely to produce results?

Developing a viable research project involves striking a delicate balance between taking risks and playing safe. The project needs to be innovative, but not to the extent that it is too ambitious to succeed.

When I was at school, I was taught graphical linear programming, which is a rather rudimentary way of mathematically optimising several variables by achieving the best possible compromise between them. Designing a research project is rather like that. The variables are:-

• time: how long will the project last and when are the deadlines?
• resources: what can be afforded, for example regarding travel and equipment?
• size: how big can (or should) the data set be?
• significance: what makes this worthwhile?
• content: what am I trying to do?
  

The foundations of the project can be assembled by thinking up its key words. These can be as many as needed and can be geographical (where?), topical (what?), methodological (how?), and temporal (when?). It is better to start with a small and modest idea rather than a grandiose one. If it turns out to be too modest, it is almost always far easier to scale up than to whittle down.

In a research proposal it is not what you know, it is what you intend to do that matters. This therefore needs detail and requires a concrete approach. Your central issue is how to construct a data set. Hence, you can even start from that and work back to your research questions. It is not the orthodox way of doing things, but it works in a crisis!

A hypothesis is a testable proposition, a postulate to be examined. Hypotheses are remarkably difficult to construct. They need to tread the fine dividing line between being trivial and being too difficult to test. Probably the best way to arrive at a testable hypothesis is to read the literature in a critical frame of mind. What relationships are suggested but, at least in certain circumstances, not proven? Virtually all hypotheses need to be causal, and to deal with causes that are not obvious: indeed, in the end the hypothesised causes or relationships may or may not exist.*

All research students should be fully aware of the distinction between inductive and deductive reasoning. The weakest thesis projects are those that rely on a “look-see” descriptive approach. Deduction is a much more efficient form of enquiry. Successful, functional hypotheses are by their very nature deductive. A hypothesis such as “Flood response is not very effective in _______” is not a good one. To ascertain whether the response to floods is good or bad is a matter of judgement and perhaps appropriate measurement. It does not tax the brain very much. A better hypothesis would involve an educated guess about why flood response is poor. Hypotheses are about causal relationships.

One of the first tasks of a research student is to read the literature on the topic in question. This often leads to the writing of a literature review that is unfocussed, poorly organised and far too broad. The whole purpose of the review should be to ascertain (a) what we already know about the specific topic of the research (i.e., to create a starting point for a new enquiry), and (b) to identify the gaps in knowledge of the topic that are worthy of research and have potential to conduct it.

A dissertation will need a data set. Herein lies a paradox. The data set will refer to a very specific question, place, phenomenon or whatever, but the results of analysing it will have to feed back into much larger issues. In my own doctoral research I studied 300 metres of stream channel but in so doing grappled with the question “does randomness exist?” If I did not solve it, at least it was fun and edifying to try.

So how does one stop floundering when it is necessary to formulate the great research project. First, concentrate on the essentials: (a) what you want to find out, (b) the ‘why?’ of it and causality, and (c) most importantly, the methodology and work plan - in as much detail as possible. If necessary, work back to the research questions and hypothesis from reasoning about what the data set should consist of and what secrets it is likely to yield.

*The American journalist H.L. Mencken wrote rather disparagingly that "a professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas." Perhaps, but irritating as theories are, we cannot do without them, whereas a dog can do without fleas very well.

How Shall We Communicate Risk in an Era of ‘Manufactured Reality’?

 

I live in a short street that connects a 15th-century convent to a Napoleonic-era theatre. On one side there is a park full of ornamental trees, in the middle there is a via crucis flanked by a double row of plane trees and the other side is lined by a row of elegant palazzi. The street is paved with flagstones and parking is forbidden by law. My neighbour parks her car outside her front door every night.  She does so even though it is only 30 metres to a legitimate car park, there is a sign forbidding parking and the local police occasionally fine her. We have tried gently to reason with her, pointing out that the street is nicer without cars in it, that bad behaviour encourages others to do the same, that the neighbours disapprove, and that the sump of her car leaks oil onto the flagstones. We have even pointed out that Pope Francis says that obeying minor laws is important, a Christian duty and an example to others. Yet in her mind none of this is sufficient to overrule the convenience of being able to go out of her house straight into her car and drive away. If the police fine her, then they are at fault and so is the law. If the neighbours disapprove, then they are misguided.

This is a very minor example of something that is multiplied a thousand times every day. Collectively, it amounts to a move away from rationality. Rational argument no longer convinces many people. It does not even overawe them if they are unable to grasp it. The result is a sort of ‘alternative reality’, in which things are as they are, not because this is a reasonable outcome, but because people have convinced themselves that this is what they believe.

Technology compounds the problem. As long ago as 1997 Henry Quarantelli observed that it “leads a double life. one which conforms to the intentions of designers and interests of power and another which contradicts them.” In the so-called information age, rational argument is increasingly impotent. In the words of Louis Theroux, “Dodgy algorithms have weaponised our anger and fear, enticing us into liking and sharing content that is false and divisive. ...[and left us] powerless to resist the spread of junk information.”

The potential conclusion of this situation involves an ancient concept called, in French, anomie (it has also been absorbed into standard English as anomy but it not widely known). The French sociologist Emile Durkheim rescued it from obscurity and used it in his 1893 book De la division du travail social (translated as The Division of Labour in Society). Anomie, or anomy, is a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals. Corruption, bad leadership, vested interests, marginalisation, poverty, the rise of the ‘precariat’, grievance and polarisation are some of the factors that underlie it. Collective anomie amounts to a form of nihilism.

A second very pertinent concept is akrasia (ἀκρασία), the state of mind in which someone acts against their better judgement through weakness of will or want of self-command. This is sometimes intertwined with cognitive dissonance, simultaneous belief in two concepts that are mutually incompatible. For example: “dangerous earthquakes occur here; I live here; I am not endangered by earthquakes”. We might further tie these concepts into the model of information dissemination propounded by Herman and Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent. Chomsky elaborated on the model in his subsequent work, Letters from Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda.

I was trained as a scientist, which means that I was taught to believe that there is only one reality, which should be pursued and can be revealed by objective, rational thought. More than 40 years later, I am convinced that instead there are innumerable realities, and who is to say that my reality is more real than anyone else’s? This may seem like a false argument when it comes to conspiracy theories or judgements that are amply disproved by information that has been rigorously obtained and properly vetted. However, we live in an age in which, increasingly, information is manufactured and thus so is reality, simply because people believe the information.

I end this set of reflections with two models that are intended to show how reality is created by the power of perceptions and their transformation into shared opinions through socialisation using the powerful new tools that are available in modern mass communication, particularly social media. For many citizens, ‘reality’ has become a construct based on some degree of consensus about what is happening. This may or may not be derived from real events or legitimate interpretations of them.

I still believe in rational communication and objective reality. However, we are increasingly short of the means of bridging the ‘perception gap’ and getting people to appreciate the value of rationality. I do not have the answer to this conundrum but I do believe that we have to defend the Enlightenment, even 300 years later!

Further reading

Chomsky, N. 2004. Letters from Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda, Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, Colorado, 192 pp.

Durkheim, E. 1893. The Division of Labour in Society. (De la division du travail social, trans. G. Simpson.) The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, p. 431.

Herman, E.S. and N. Chomsky 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books, New York 306 pp.

Quarantelli, E.L. 1997. Problematical aspects of the information/communication revolution for disaster planning and research: ten non-technical issues and questions. Disaster Prevention and Management 6(2): 94-106.