The Craft of Scientific Research

While the central part of the book was focused on transferable skills such how to write and how to present which are relevant to anyone doing scientific research, the last three chapters of this book focus on skill that you need at a later stage of your career: how to lead a research group, how to get funded, and today subject, how to choose a research topic. Chapter 8 starts by re-analysing the purposes of scientific research and, from this, discusses why one should choose fundamental rather than applied research and how the research question differs across this divide.  We briefly explain what Pasteur’s Quadrant is, and then we move to the core question: how do we choose our next topic to research? As usual, I first reviewed what was said about this, and I found very little; we report it in the book, but this left me quite unsatisfied. Thus, I decided to take a completely different approach. From 1990 to 2023, I selected 211 papers in which I was an author or co-author and in whi...

Public speaking is a well-developed craft, but for some reason (snobbism?), many researchers I know consider it debasing to put any effort into improving this skill.  I disagree: throughout my book, I insist that scientific research is also effective communication of our findings to our peers.  The best research result may be underappreciated or, worse, misunderstood, if we communicate it poorly. The chapter starts by stressing how a good talk is always the balancing of three elements: storytelling, factual reporting, and public performance.  Then, we discuss each of the key steps to prepare a talk: pick your story, frame it, develop your stage presence, plan the multimedia, put it all together, and plan your delivery. As I go through this, I drift into nostalgia and tell the story of how preparing a scientific presentation has changed, moving from analogue projectors to fully digital systems (here, the figure of an analogue slide projector). Kodak Carousel slide projecto...

Chapters six and seven move to two of the most fundamental crafts of our profession: how to write a scientific research paper and how to give a scientific research presentation. It is with these two seminars that the “business” of doctoral training began many years ago; I was tired of always repeating the same things to my students, so I started giving a seminar once a year. In Chapter 6, after addressing the basic question “Why should you publish?”, we discuss how communication first implies comprehension, and we offer some advice on written language. We introduce the concept of International English, a written form distinct from any spoken dialect of English, and direct non-native speakers to Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”.  We then move to a short history of science and of scientific communication, to reach January 5th, 1665, only 27 years after the publication of Galileo Galilei’s “Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche Intorno a Due Nuove Scienze”, when the first i...

Originally, this topic was not part of the doctoral course for which this book serves as the syllabus. But I felt the need to add it because I believe there is, in various scientific domains, a true crisis about how to assess the credibility of information. I start by referring to the classic theory of information, where quantitative information is treated as an estimand whose estimates are produced by an estimator, which can be of three types: measured, inferred, or predicted.  I propose that the distinction between inferred and predicted is whether the estimator uses prior knowledge; in that case, we call it a predictive estimator. And prior knowledge is, in this narrow definition, considered only as explicit knowledge, such as the second law of dynamics (rigorously defined as an undefeated justified true belief). Then to assess the credibility of the estimator (and thus of the information it estimates), we have three separate frameworks: for measured estimators, it is provided b...

In Chapter 3, we discussed in detail the process through which research is conducted in both basic and applied sciences, and we concluded that, in all cases, conducting research involves idealisation. The concept of idealisation is linked to and connected to the model concept. Thus, the next step in our journey, marked by big questions,  is: What is a scientific model? The chapter is based on a seminar I have offered to PhD students for many years, which is in turn the pedagogical version of this paper: Viceconti, M. (2011). A tentative taxonomy for predictive models in relation to their falsifiability. Philos Transact A Math Phys Eng Sci 369(1954), 4149-61. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0227.  We attempt to define what a model is by examining examples, conducting logical analysis, and revisiting the philosophical debate on the topic, yet we fail all the time.  Then, we turn the problem on its head, and instead of assuming that models are a product of science, we cons...

 After wondering why we need to know (Chapter 1) and how humans seek knowledge in the world (Chapter 2), it is now time for the most fundamental question: How to do research.  This is one of the questions to which we either answer too superficially, or too deeply, getting lost in the details. The superficial answer is that we do scientific research by forming reliable and actionable knowledge (what we previously called undefeated justified true belief) through a specific process known as the scientific method. And from this rather superficial definition, we usually proceed to discuss how a specific investigation is conducted in a particular subdomain of science, drowning in details. Finding the right level of abstraction can be a challenging task.  I personally find the approach proposed by Frank Zok (Zok, 2020 DOI:10.1557/mrs.2020.207) extremely useful. Zok reflects on the knowledge hierarchy, the cognitive structures used in the process, the targeted outcomes of the pro...

 In scientific research, decision-making is driven by the scientific method.  However, if we analyse this process closely, we notice that this process relies on three assumptions, which are now rarely satisfied: - Scientific research is a collective endeavour. All people involved in producing and assessing a new knowledge item are peers, experts in the same field (at the same level). - There is total efficiency in communication. Within a particular debate, we are all peers, and we all share the same specialised vocabulary; the chances of misunderstanding are minimal. - The opinions of this group of peers may be individually biased but not collectively. Individual biases should be averaged away if I involve enough peers in the debate. A lot of current research is or is becoming interdisciplinary. This means that the group of people working in a research activity cannot be considered peers.  Each of them has a superior understanding of the other in their own subdomain. Comm...

 The whole book is about how to produce new knowledge. Therefore, it makes sense that we first ask ourselves: Why do we (as individuals and as a species) need to know? The purposes of scientific research are to increase the knowledge of humanity and to solve humanity’s problems. Why do we need to know how the universe works to solve humanity’s problems? And more in general, why do we need to know, even when this does not immediately solve a problem? As usual in this book, in front of such a big question, we resort to philosophers.  We discuss Mill’s “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”; Nietzsche’s “life could be an experiment for the seeker for knowledge”, and we even explore how Zen Buddhism see it.  We return to the classic theory of knowledge, which originates from Plato’s Meno Socratic dialogue, and introduce the concepts of Justified True Belief and of Undefeated Justified True Belief. As is often the case with philosophers, while we ...

It's been a busy Christmas break, but it is finally out.  On December 27th, I published the first incomplete draft; today, you can find the complete first version of my book “The Craft of Scientific Research”, self-published as green open access through the Zenodo repository.  This DOI will give you access to the latest version: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18069190 . In the past five days, 182 people have already downloaded the first draft. I invite you all to download this new version, which, in addition to being properly formatted, has been extensively revised and enhanced with the inclusion of a full bibliography and a brief 'Afterthoughts' section at the end. This book is not published by a Traditional Publishing House, so its primary form of promotion is word of mouth.  Please repost on LinkedIn and pass the link to all your PhD students, asking them to share it as well. As a cover, after some discussions with my wife, Paola, I opted for a picture of an old shoema...