Research is a mindset. It’s an eternally curious state of mind that keeps walking into dark alleys, searching for something - an explanation, a deeper understanding, an inspiration, or plain nothingness that is still beautiful. It is a personal journey, through which humanity has benefited immensely.
Research that has to operate with constraints of methodology and publishability struggles to attain the depths of exploration. Having said that, methodological rigour is meant to establish robustness of findings, which is, without doubt, the most important criteria for acceptability of a research outcome. However, scholars trained to “do” research in text-book ways often fail to appreciate alternative perspectives and approaches on theory, method and robustness. This is especially troublesome in social sciences where experimental evidence is rare and theory building is supposed to be incremental and contributory.
The existing paradigms of funding and incentives around research work have created a culture of risk-aversion. Too much structure and boundedness is not healthy for scientific exploration. Research requires passion that can’t thrive under pressure to generate outcomes.
