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Gomez Oviedo Oscar Fernando

February 5, 2015

The Craft of Research and How to Choose a Good


Scientific Problem

It may sound hard to start a new research project, even the most experienced researchers find very
difficult to do it, but when you start digging about a topic of your interest you will find out that is a matter of
discipline, interest, hard work and consciousness from what are you writing about, for which audience you are
researching and with which purpose, all that is explained on the book The Craft of Research (Wayne C. Booth,
Gregory G. Colomb & Joseph M. Williams) and the paper How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem written by
Uri Alon both on which the next essay is based on.
It is very interesting how everything about researching is explained in the book, as you go on reading it, it
explains from what is research about and teach you step by step how to make a good research project and how
research is present on the our daily lives, from wanting to know where you can find something you need to the
learning of new information, maybe people is not aware of it, but every day we do a lot of research.
It is also very interesting how the book is made on a conversational way, so you actually feel like the
author is talking directly to you, which make it a very interesting book, it explains why every step of the research
process is important, for example, it tells you why writing everything that seems important for your work, because
this way you can remember everything you have seen of the topic, normally, research projects are made in a
middle or long term of time, so you can forget the things you found interesting or useful at the beginning of your
work if you forget to write them down, also writing helps you understand better how things are interrelated, the
complication of certain things and the implications of them. But the most important is that writing helps you pulling
out information from your head to paper, which will give you more perspective of what you are working on.
Another important argument of the book is when it explains why researches must adopt a formal format, it
is important for us as students to understand that it is not enough to write a paper to get a grade, it is more
important to contribute with new knowledge to the community in order to do that, we must follow the protocol that
has been adopted by the scientific community through the pass of the years, so that is why papers, thesis or any
formal research document must follow and standard format, which also gives it a better presentations and more
convincing idea. So we must not write for ourselves, we must write thinking on our readers.
A very important fact of research is that if it is not read it is useless, thats why a researcher must know
how to connect with his audience and in order to achieve that he must first define to which audience its research
will be directed to, it is easily explained with an example of two cardiac short paragraphs, which actually express
the same idea, but one is intended to be read by an specialized audience, and the other to a lower expertized
audience. With this example it is very easy to understand how the reactions of the reader will be if we dont define
to which audience we are writing for.
Our role as researchers is to create a relationship with our readers, it is not enough to prepare a great
research project and expect the readers to come by themselves and start reading it, we must provide something
useful that attracts them, it can be something new that they dont know, but we as researchers know that it is
important for them to know about it and according to the book, it can be presented in three different ways. The first
one is to find something really interesting of a certain topic that they dont know, so they will be automatically
interested on knowing this new information. The second is founding a solution to a practical problem that is
important to the readers, they will found your research very useful and will be anxious to apply this new solutions

Gomez Oviedo Oscar Fernando

February 5, 2015

to their lives. And the third type of hook is to found an answer to a question that readers considerate very
important, maybe you wont give a practical solution but at last you discovered how something can be solved on
the theoretical way, so you can leave and open door to another researcher or yourself to try to find the practical
solution to the problem.
It is also very interesting how the counterpart of the relationship behaves, the reader reacts to each one of
the types of researches explained previously, they can be expecting to be entertained with a new interesting topic,
they can be expecting of you to explain your practical solution to a problem of their interest or they as experts on
the topic are expecting to amuse them with something new about that topic and if you dont you will be judged
badly as researcher.
When the author explains how writing in groups works, It shows you that choosing a working team can be very
frustrating, you must know how every member of the group works and what they are good at, setting the ground
rules is very important and choosing a working structure too, because that can be the difference between a very
efficient well done research work and a disaster.
The author explains very easy how inexperience can play and important role on you researcher if you are
a novice at it, but also gives you very important tips on how to handle that problems, which is very useful to we
novice researchers.
After the author finish explaining the things researchers must considerate before making a new project, it
explains how you must choose a topic to start with. It is very interesting how it leads you from a general idea to an
specific topic, it makes you think about your interests and how they can transform into a research project, also
how can sources can play and important role on an advanced research project, because the most specific your
topic is, the harder to find sources will be.
What the book seems to explain about choosing your topic, is that it is useful to identify the parts of your topic,
how those parts are interrelated and what is its role in history, also how it can be categorized and determine its
value, is a good idea to write questions about your topic, questioning your topic will help you to make it an
stronger based research.
The most useful question when choosing a topic is asking yourself: So what? It will really help you considerate if
your topic can be considered a useful topic or it will be declined as soon as you published it.
On the fourth chapter the examples given by the authors are very important to easily understand the next
step on your research project, how every research project starts with a problem thats lead to research questions,
then to a research problem and finally to a research answer, it may sound very easy in the examples they give the
reader, but when trying to apply it to a very specific topic it may not be as easy as it seems, thats why sources are
very important when choosing a topic. Knowing the difference between a practical problem and a research
problem is very difficult to beginner researchers, the first one is actually a condition that has undesirable
consequences, the second is situations you may find in order to solve the first one.
An important thing to know about research problem are that their consequences are most of the time
abstract, because they force you to think about what you dont know but you want to, it is not measurable, it has
no consequences at all but the feeling of learning something new you want to know.
Also it is very important to identify if your research project is a pure or an applied subject, because that also will
affect to which audience you must be directed to, you need to ask yourself if you want to achieve knowledge, or
you want to achieve doing. In the book the authors explains you how connection between research problem and
practical consequences are done, following very easy steps, making yourself questions about your topic that will
shape it to its correct form.
Asking help is to another researchers is also a great idea for beginner researchers, they can help you by giving
you specific problems about your topics if they are related with yours but it is important not to do just what they
ask you too, but to do a lot more, read more about your topic, criticize the author when it is based on solid
arguments and that will lead you to problems that may need to find an answer.

Gomez Oviedo Oscar Fernando

February 5, 2015

Chapter five is one of the most important chapters when it explains how problems became sources, what
are the most important kind of sources and how it is easier to use them in favor, when it comes to an advanced
research, printed information is the most reliable type of source, also it is very useful to know how to identify the
reliability of a source, the authors explains which sources are most reliable and how they can be verify, most of
them are important journals, which will make you to search which are the most important and reliable journals on
our topic, it also mention that most of the best universities has their own data base which can be very useful and
is a very reliable source for a research project, getting help from expert people on the topic is also very important
even they can be considered as reliable sources if they have done papers or projects on the topic, most of them
will be glad to be cited on your work.
When coming to reliability of the sources reputation is very important, there are works that just because of
the name of the author, can be considered as a law on the topic. That applies to universities and presses too,
when an institution or press is expert on a certain topic, you can be sure that it is a very reliable source for your
research project.
According to the author, internet and electronic sources are the worst for advanced research projects, the
explanation is very clear, when coming to internet, any people can upload anything about everything, just by being
involved in the topic doesnt makes them experts on a certain topic, must of all works found on the internet if it is
not from a reliable data base it probably has no validation, bases or it will be probably a copy of others author,
also it makes it very difficult to find information on the internet because of the massive amount of data you can
find in it, so when trying to find a reliable source, internet can be the worst of your enemies.
The next step on the book is explained in chapter six, where it explains you how to use the sources you
found on chapter five, the examples the authors gives you on this chapter are very ethical and easily to
comprehend. It also tells you how sources can be used, not just as a source of information but as a mine of
problems that can be argued, an argument that can support or defy your work and the most used on research
works which is to use sources as an evidence to support your claims, the more respected the source is, the more
respected your work will be. The recommendations on the usage of sources is very clear, it teaches you from how
to read your sources, like rereading when you dont understand something, avoid using data that you cant
analyze or understand, because if you dont do it the right way, it may make your readers doubt about your
reliability.
Also never forget to preserve every source you use to your research work, it is very important how you
cite every single kind of source, from bibliographical data, online sources or photocopied books, everything must
be exactly on the standardized way established by the format you are using on your research.
It is very important to be careful on how you use your sources, when you are doing a research work on
something that can inflict negative aspects on something, you must choose your words very wisely in order to
avoid sounding like an accusation with no bases.
At the end of chapter six we find that getting help is also very important when feeling that everything go faster that
we can handle, because of the amount of information or the rhythm the research is progressing, it is valid to ask
to teachers, classmates, specialists to counsel you about how to put all that information into the right way, trying to
make the less mistakes on quotation and summarizing that you can.
Choosing a good scientific problem it is not as hard as a grad student think, as it is explained on Uri Alons
essay How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem, it depends on some external factors the researcher must deal
with, basically one must ask himself the amount of time he has to finish the project, how much time will be spent
on choosing the topic, what kind of project do the researcher wants to work in, an easy or hard one, what amount
of knowledge acquisition will the researcher will have small or large amount? Is very interesting how it is explained
the model on which some researchers are used to work with, it is very rare that a project not even just a research
project but any kind of project has its complications, for which the people involved must be prepared to deal with,
for example if you give your team a deadline which may seem very difficult to finish, many of them may feel
frustrated or stressed to find results or become more productive, that later can transform into mistakes,
depression or loss of interest in the project, so it is better to know in which position of the graphics explained on

Gomez Oviedo Oscar Fernando

February 5, 2015

the essay your research project will be and what work model will you like to adopt, taking your time to do both and
choosing your topic.
According to the author of this paper, the most common mistake on choosing a topic for a research
problem is the amount of time one invest on this decision, people tends to choose the first problem it comes to
mind, so when normally a research project takes from months to years to finish it, taking days or weeks to choose
a topic can save months of work on the project. Uri Alon, gives an example of how he has a rule on his lab, which
says that for choosing a new research project, students must take three months to choose their topics, this in
order to avoid frustration or lack of interest later when the project has started, the only problem when applying this
rule is that as it is common in must people, they can tend to desperate or feel unproductive.
When working in teams, it is harder to choose a research topic because of the clash of interests, for
example, when one person suggest a topic that can be applied to solve and specific problem, but another
member of the team wants to give the project a different focus or doesnt found it that interesting, that can be an
important problem to considerate, because as one member of the team can be very committed to the project,
another member who doesnt find it interesting wont use his full capacity to cooperate on solving the problem.
The Article also tell us how important is for a mentor to listen to his students, which topics are they
interested in, where do they want to lead their projects to, this gives the mentors a patron on how their students
behave and what values they practice.
When preparing a student for a research projects, mentors should be conscious of teaching their students
how scientific problems works in real life, they should explain that it may be variations or deviations on their
research path, so they dont feel lost or frustrated when their results are leading in a different way as expected on
the beginning, is a very common behavior not only on research projects, but in practical problems too.
In conclusion, it is very important to invest time on knowing what your research topic will be, also it is very
important that you get to know which audience will your project will be directed to that can be the difference
between success and failure, because a research project that it is not read, is practically useless. After choosing
your topic it is very important to gather information on reliable sources, reliability is everything when talking about
research, it is valid to criticize others authors work but only when you have valid arguments to do it. Choose
wisely your sources, the more expertized authors you find, the more useful the information will be. Dont forget
choosing if your project will bring knowledge, answer questions or solve practical problems, on which you need to
considerate the tools you have to work with, everything is very well explained on the book and essay mentioned
on the beginning on this essay which both are very useful for beginners on the research field, specially grad
students learning how researching works.

Gomez Oviedo Oscar Fernando


Essay 1
February 5, 2015

References:

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. "Chapters 1-6." The
Craft of Research. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2003. Print.
Alon, Uri. "How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem." Molecular Cell Forum
(2009.09.13): 726-28. Print.

Gomez Oviedo Oscar Fernando

February 5, 2015

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