What research actually is · Lesson 2 of 3

What research is not

If the search could not have reached the opposite conclusion, it was not a search.

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Not opinion. An opinion is a position you hold. Research is a position the evidence holds, which you are reporting. The test is simple: could you state what would make you change it? If nothing would, you have an opinion, which is fine — but it is not a finding.

Not gathering information. Collecting forty sources is an input, not an output. Research happens when you do something to those sources: compare them, notice where they disagree, work out why, and say what the set of them supports. A pile of links is a pile of links.

Not journalism, though they overlap. Journalism answers "what happened" for a public, on a deadline, and is usually strongest on the specific and the recent. Research answers "what is generally true, and how confident can we be", and is usually strongest on the repeated and the systematic. A good journalist uses research methods; the goals differ.

Not investigation, though that overlaps too. An investigation pursues a specific case — what happened here, who did what. Research pursues a pattern that holds beyond the case. Both need evidence and both can be rigorous; you should know which one you are doing, because they have different finish lines.

Not a search for support. The most common failure is starting with the conclusion and collecting the evidence that fits. It produces work that looks like research, cites real sources, and is worth nothing, because the search was never able to come out the other way.

See it happen

A colleague sends you a document titled "Research: why we should move to a four-day week", with fourteen citations.

The read that arrives on its own

Fourteen citations, real studies, a clear conclusion — this looks like solid research and you are inclined to accept it.

The same situation, with this idea

You check whether any of the fourteen sources found no effect or a negative one. None did. A literature where every single study agrees is rare, so either the field really is settled — which you can check — or the search only looked one way. That does not make the conclusion false; it makes the document unable to tell you whether it is true.

After this, you can

ask of any piece of work: could this have come out differently?

The takeaway

If the search could not have reached the opposite conclusion, it was not a search.

Easy to take the wrong way

That having a hypothesis is the same as having decided. Starting with an expectation is normal and often necessary — the discipline is looking for what would contradict it, not pretending you had none.

Try this

Find something you believe strongly about your own field, and spend ten minutes looking specifically for the strongest evidence against it. Note what you find, and what you do not.