Vol. 19 - Research projects and research programs
Lakatos' "The Methodology of Scientific Research Programs" challenges views on scientific progress and the importance of research programs over individual theories.
Few books shaped the way I do research like Lakatos’ “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programs“ (maybe “For and Against Method”?).
In this collection of papers (MSRP, as it’s usually abbreviated), Lakatos argues that a research program is a mostly continuous series of theories that are evaluated in time, and help construct a hard core of central theses that should be resistant to refutations.
This is a gross approximation, but I encourage everyone (especially everyone heading a research group!) to read this book.
I was skimming through it again when preparing a seminar about ecological networks last month, where I tried to retcon about 10 years of research about how species interactions vary over time and space into a cohesive narrative arc. Each of these little milestones along the way were the outcome of a research project; the full picture, that’s the program.
Because the pace of academic evaluation is so breakneck, we are fascinated with projects. “I am working on question X and in three years I will have two more papers about it” is a much more tempting proposition than “I wonder where we’ll be in 10 years”, especially to funders seeking rapid impacts, and academics who tend to evaluate slow, long-term work unfavourably.
We gotta get these Altmetric numbers up.
This is why I think MSRP is a really good antidote to the often nearsighted view of what constitutes scientific progress - long-term progress in our understanding requires exploring the space of hypotheses. Some will be accepted, some will not, and what matters is the sequence of these theories much more than each individual one.
This is scientific progress as gardening. Sometimes you plant, sometimes you weed out, but whatever you do, the process takes time and a lot of small, localized efforts.
A good (“progressive”, in MSRP parlance) research programs cannot survive without good projects; but good projects without the framing of a program are a random walk. They contribute short-term gain at the cost of long-term stagnation.
And with all that said, stay tuned for Vol. 20 next week, for some examples of activities about teaching students (and undergraduates in particular) how to deeply read papers.