There was a passage in one of the Foundation novels where an armchair scientist described his doing science in terms of comparing the writings of various authors, and Salvor Hardin (I think) appraised the man's perspective on science negatively. I've always remembered that, and took on Hardin's attitude, but since I've actually had to do research...honestly, that's actually a lot of it. There is, perhaps, more effort that must go into systematizing one's own knowledge in parsing the various studies rather than just comparing the relative "authority" of the authors of different studies as I believe the armchair scientist was doing, but, significantly, it's not all just observation and experiment: there's theorizing that has to happen too, which depends on close reading and critically comparing results.

I'm not sure if I'm really arguing against anyone's actual perspective on how science is done here (I barely remember the passage from the novel in the first place.), but I just wanted to make a record of this way of thinking that I suppose has caused me a measure of embarrassment in years past about not being more hands-on in my research.
#science #research