Minefields!

The readings today again highlighted the danger of trusting research simply because it was published by someone. Interestingly, these articles seem to encourage a close reading of the research methodology whereas our previous reading about research articles encouraged focusing on the conclusions. I suspect bogus research might be more of a problem in the pharmaceutical industry (where big pharmaceutical companies have a financial incentive to provide research heralding the successes of their new drugs) but I've certainly seem some research in music education that draws conclusions that seem tenuous. In particular, I've noticed studies often have sample sizes that seem too low, or seem to ignore factors that might distort results (and there are plenty of these when researching human behavior).

To avoid these pitfalls, I think we need to enter into research firmly accepting that we might not be able to prove what we intuitively believe to be true. We must consider every single way in which our conclusions might be disproved and point out the limitations of our research even when drawing conclusions. Until the research community gets its act together, it is probably wiser to place our greatest trust only in periodicals that are well-established and have a history of solid research. And on a more global scale, I think the incentives that exist to publish research need to be closely examined and reconsidered.