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"We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific
journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys
or to describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified
manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work ..."
Richard P. Feynman (1965)
⌂
UNKNOWN
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A
web-based platform designed to
allow individuals to
directly observe
ongoing research
projects by
reading research logs
maintained by active scientific
researchers.
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RESOURCE OBJECTIVES
ALLOW NON-RESEARCHERS TO OBSERVE
ONGOING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
۰
ENABLE
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHERS TO MAINTAIN PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLY
RESEARCH JOURNALS
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The
most profound realization one can
have regarding the scientific
research process is the realization
that it is not linear.
As noted repeatedly throughout our
research-based curriculum, the false
impression that the evolution of
scientific understanding is a linear
progression of ideas leading man
from a state of ignorance to one of
relative enlightenment, is one whose
persistence is due wholly to its
convenience. It is, after all,
far simpler to study, and
make sense of, a process which
occurs in one
direction than it is one which
occurs iteratively.
During a 2005 commencement address
delivered at Stanford University, US
entrepreneur Steve Jobs (b. 1955),
in describing the patterns and
general trends he has observed
retrospectively within his own life,
quipped that "you can't connect the
dots looking forward; you can only
connect them looking backwards."
In the evolution of scientific
understanding, as in the course of
one's life, the patterns and trends
which may be observed, become
visible only when one is looking
backward.
All
scientific understanding is fundamentally a product
of trial and error.
In no single
document is this axiom better represented
than within the private journal/log entries of
each individual researcher.
Unfortunately, as few researchers maintain
such documents (choosing, instead, to
publish only their conclusions as formal
scholarly articles or monographs), rarely are young
researchers exposed to the lengthy records
of trial and error which underlie each
experimental observation.
By developing a Research Log (R-LOG) platform to
allow researchers to produce
a record of their day-to-day activities, we seek to encourage the development of a vast
library of such documents which will
ultimately benefit all researchers and all those impacted by
their work!
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