On Researchal Significancy

Have you ever got a thought, at least fortuitously, that one day findings from your research, which is boring, demanding, exacting that you have been doing for ages, all alone, through being broke so often, unnoticed and unimpressed by people around you perhaps those include your spouse or your girl-friend or boy-friend, even your parents, brothers or sisters, or your comrades, or your pastors or monks or boring Pope, or your government, your opposition, will, forever, for once and for all, change the way we understand about our lives or the nature, or improve our living standards exponentially or the way our government perform its task that actually serve our interest, or provide the better ways to treat or cure the diseases? (I know, I know, my sentence is too long. But remember Keynes’ General Theory is also badly organised and difficult to read. In fact, according to one of his greatest admirers, Paul Samuelson, who was also an author of very famous economic text book, Keynes' General Theory is "badly written, poorly organised .... it is arrogant, bad-tempered, polemical and not overly generous in its acknowledgements. It abounds in mare's nests and confusions". However, he continues, "in short, it is a work of genius" (cited in Moggridge, 1992, cited again in Strathern, 2002: 281. I am going to write a lot of posts on Keynes.).

Image from Barnes & Noble,

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/general-theory-of-employment-interest-and-money-john-maynard-keynes/1100156669?ean=9780230004764

Trust me, never, ever, forever underestimate the significant of your research that you love dearly, you are so passionate about, you live with it, sleep with it, and have been giving up everything just for it.

It might not happen suddenly, but it will really have invaluable impact in one way or another as long as you believe in yourselves and in what you are researching correctly, professionally, diligently.

With that belief, single-mindedness, and gigantic crazy dream, with a little bit of arroganceness, I stick to my research and my writings, no matter what.

Let’s see one example to support my argument.

It was happened about 80 years ago: to be precise, it was on February 13, 1929.

The place was at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.

It was just a normal research paper reading at the Medical Research Club.

The paper was read by (oh!, no, I will not tell the name of the researcher, but I will do it later.)

The audience at the club was apathetic. No one showed any enthusiasm for the paper.  As Leedy and Ormrod (2001: 43) rightly observe, “great research has frequently been presented to those who are imaginatively both blind and deaf.” (Now, I understand why research grant organizations are not so keen about my research. They are just imaginatively blind and deaf. All of them will be greatly regretful for being uninterested to grant research grants for my research project.)

Although his colleague and audience at the club were indifferent, unimpressed, and apathetic, he knew the value of what he had done, what he had found from his research.  He knew how significant his research outcome really is.

It was actually one of the greatest moments in 20^th-century medical research (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001: 43).

Fifteen years later from that day the researcher read his paper to imaginatively blind and deaf audience, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine, together with two other researchers. It was in 1945.

His name is Alexander Fleming, or Dr Alexander Fleming, or Sir Alexander Fleming.

Fleming (centre) receiving the Nobel prize from King Gustaf V of Sweden (right) in 1945.

Image from the Wikimedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nobelpristagare_Fleming_Midi.jpg

The paper he read at the club was about his research on penicillin. It was in fact presentation of one of the most significant research reports of the early 20th century.

Fleming was named by Time magazine, in 1999, as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his discovery of penicillin, by stating that “it was a discovery that would change the course of history. … the most efficacious life-saving drug in the world, penicillin would alter forever the treatment of bacterial infections” (Time, 29 March 1999).

The procedures of great research (Nobel research, in my term) are exactly the same as those of what we, students, follow in doing our dissertation, thesis, research report. “All research begins with a problem, an observation, a question. Curiosity is the germinal seed.

     Hypotheses are formulated.

     Data are gathered.

     Conclusions are reached” (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001: 44).

(I did try to paraphrase, but the original composition is so beautiful and so perfect. So I gave up. It’s better to quote directly, faithfully :-)

(I am going to tell about Charles Goodyear soon, who lived his whole life, and gave up everything just for a single purpose.)

References

Moggridge, D. (1992) Maynard Keynes: An Economist’s Biography. London: Routledge. According to Strathern (2002), it is the best single-volume biography of Keynes’ life, times and ideas.

Leedy, P. D. and Ormrod, J. E. (2001) Practical Research: Planning and Design (7^th Ed). Upper Saddle River (New Jersey): Merrill Prentice Hall.

Strathern, P. (2002) Dr Strangelove’s Game: A Brief History of Economic Genius. London: Penguin.

Note: The previous title was given as “Significance of Research”, but I felt that it was so boring and then tried to be creative and got that new title; it sounds like so Latin. I am also so pleased with my coincency: I again got that new term deriving from ‘coin’.