Question: How do you research

Tom Dally answered on 11 Mar 2020: last edited 11 Mar 2020 9:58 am

In general? Research is a fun (and often long) process. You usually start by finding a general question that you think sounds interesting, like “Does weather radar pick up insects?”. You then go away and look at what other scientists have written about your question in the past. All scientists try to publish their research as articles in scientific journals, so you end up reading a lot! Then, if you’ve found some support for your question, you can go ahead and create some hypotheses (specific, testable questions) like “Can weather radar systems be used to monitor insects in the lower atmosphere?”. And then you design experiments to test these hypotheses, write up your results, and hopefully publish them yourself so that other scientists can read them.