How do good research ideas come about?
Informatics Around You Published in Beijing at 2023-08-07 08:20
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Scientific research ideas are the soul and primary factor of scientific research, and determine the height of research. An innovative scientific research idea is the basis and important cornerstone for researchers to obtain scientific research funding and finally publish high-quality articles. For scientific research masters, research ideas are no longer a problem. If you are a rookie in scientific research, even if you have good ideas, you may not necessarily get good research results. Because good scientific research cannot be realized without good experimental design. This article summarizes the origin of scientific research ideas, the evaluation of good scientific research ideas, and the different realms of scientific research ideas, hoping to inspire everyone.
1
Generation of research ideas (Ideas)
1. Based on the research direction , look for scientific research ideas through literature reading
Where do scientific ideas come from? I think the answers of most researchers come from reading the literature, after all, everyone came here from graduate students. Some teachers on Science.com suggested to find scientific research ideas based on their own research field, look at the international development, grasp the research hotspots from a macro perspective, learn from the progress of other fields, and develop their own characteristics. I personally think that it is really important to read literature, not only papers in this field, but also articles on other interdisciplinary subjects on different topics. You must know that scientific research ideas will not be generated out of thin air. Just imagine that even a once-in-a-thousand-year genius like Newton needs to stand on the shoulders of giants, let alone ordinary people like you and me.
The following recommends a literature reading method for the purpose of finding scientific research ideas: it is not necessary to read the literature too carefully, such as materials and methods, you can skip it directly, and focus on the discussion part of the paper. On the one hand, the discussion part of the paper will explain The innovation of this paper will also make a horizontal comparison between this paper and other papers, discussing their respective advantages and disadvantages, as well as possible application prospects, unanswered questions in the paper, future research directions, etc. These are what the author needs to focus on when looking for scientific research ideas, to see what questions or hypotheses are raised, and then what technical means and methods are used to solve these problems or test these conjectures. This part is for reference Research ideas on their experiences.
Once you have inspiration, you must strike while the iron is hot and record it immediately, and immediately write down how to prove your idea and what experiments you need to do. You can prepare a "scientific research inspiration book" or a "scientific research inspiration U disk". When reading documents, listening to academic lectures, and holding group seminars in the laboratory, if any inspiration flashes in your brain, write it down immediately, and indicate the source. What problem does your inspiration solve, and what is the inspiration of this document to you? , If you had other ideas along this inspiration, just follow this idea until you don't know what to write, and continue to supplement and correct next time when relevant inspiration arises. When one day you find that the literature, method models, data, experimental design, testing methods, research purposes, etc. accumulated by one of your inspirations are relatively mature, you can discuss innovation, Feasibility, need to supplement those experiments? Which experiments need to be done first? After several back and forth in this way, basically a complete scientific research idea was formed. In fact, the above outline is to some extent the blueprint for writing papers in the future.
Literature reading is a quick way to gain inspiration through other people's experience. In addition, listening to academic lectures, communicating more with scholars with similar research directions in the same industry, and sharing your own scientific research ideas without hesitation is also a good way to gain inspiration through other people's experience. way of scientific research.
2. Discover hidden ideas based on the research you have carried out
At the beginning, scientific researchers can use literature reading to find scientific research ideas. As they grow and accumulate and deepen their understanding of this field, they can gain inspiration through their own experience, that is, the researchers themselves have already carried out some research work. With a certain amount of work accumulation, you can be guided by the scientific problems encountered in actual research, or which problems in this research field have been solved, what methods have been used to solve them, what are the advantages and disadvantages of various methods, and what problems remain to be solved. If there is no solution, make a table for comparative analysis, and combine the scientific research conditions of your own laboratory to propose hidden and feasible scientific research ideas.
2
Good Ideas
Some people say that I can come up with several research ideas every day, but unfortunately no one helps me realize them. It is also said that all the ideas I thought of were found to have been done by others. In fact, these situations all reflect such a problem. Research ideas are not uncommon, but good ideas are rare. The more critical issue is that many people do not have the ability to evaluate ideas. Simply put, the ability to evaluate ideas is the ability to distinguish those that belong to good ideas?
1. Novelty
The most important task of scientific research is to explore new problems. Newness is the most critical and basic feature of scientific research ideas, but newness alone is not enough. Ideas that others have not proposed or disdain to propose are new ideas on the surface, but they are not good. Ideas, good ideas not only need to be new, but also need to be unique, and only by being surprising can we win.
This is also a bit like the argument of writing an argumentative essay, emphasizing that the idea should be new and high, it is always a cliché, and no one will be interested. For example, spatial analysis in geography is based on the study of spatial autocorrelation, and Mr. Wang Jinfeng proposed a spatial analysis based on the theory of spatial variability. All of these entry points belong to novel ideas, that is, to look at your life from another perspective. research object.
2. Rationality
Rationality is the standard required by modern scientific research. Some ideas are novel, but they violate the basic scientific logic, which basically belongs to the category of science fiction. The rationality of scientific research ideas is the basis of research feasibility, and ideas without rationality are not worthy of in-depth research.
3. Verifiability
The basic model of modern scientific research is hypothesis-driven, and unverifiable hypotheses are difficult to enter into scientific research activities, of course, if it is a hypothesis that cannot be realized due to technical difficulties, it is another matter. Modern scientific research requires us to "assume boldly and verify carefully". Even hypotheses that cannot be verified by technical conditions must be theoretically verifiable.
3
"Three-six-nine-level" of scientific research ideas
1. Take pictures of cats and tigers
The experimental design and results are either exactly the same as those done by others, or most of them are the same, but some innovations have been found from them, such as changing the detection method and improving some characteristics. It can be said that the shell is basically the same, with a little change of fur. This kind of scientific research ideas can be said to be too simple to copy others.
2. Simple transplantation of Horizontal growth (change object)
In this case, many of our scientific research ideas are summarized from reading literature. This is probably the most direct way for us to obtain scientific research ideas. Generally, the discussion part of the literature will prompt you to tell you that you need further research. Isn’t this the so-called idea? Also susceptible to literature. People who start doing research often like to trace the literature in this way, and then transplant the traced ideas to their own subject areas. This kind of thinking is not worthless, or it has been completed or will soon be completed by others, and it is easy to think in a fixed way, and it is often difficult to make big discoveries.
3. Filling gaps Filling gaps (reasonable collocation)
If you simply follow the author's advice, this method is definitely not advisable. But we can deduce new research more broadly, or in other words, to solve an old problem, try new technologies and methods, and to solve a new problem, we must first consider classical technology. This might not be a good idea.
4. Based on the undiscovered mechanism Working out details
Mining undiscovered mechanisms requires researchers to have a relatively long-term tracked field of interest, be familiar with important scientific and technological issues in this field, and be sensitive to all new developments in this field, at least one month after a problem is solved and published Find out in a week. Then read extensively books and documents in other related fields, and attend relevant academic conferences. In short, you must keep acquiring all kinds of relevant information. Combined with your own problems, many ideas may continue to emerge.