There is no hope of doing perfect research

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Once upon the time there was a crazy man who thought that he could fly just like birds, so he attempted to fly by using set of wings that contributed to his death. That man was Abbas Ibn Fernas. If after research and experiment we discover that trying to fly will contribute to death, then the Wright brothers must not do their research and attempt to fly. Flying was a crazy idea that would definitely lead to death.

“There is no hope of doing perfect research”, a statement that was being said by Griffiths in 1998 to tell that there’s no hope in doing a perfect research since the research is done by a human being. It’s known that a human being is never perfect because perfection is a characteristic that is granted only to God. Anything that is done by a human won’t be perfect 100% and the same is applied for research if done or dominated by a human being.

But in order to understand this statement exactly we have to understand the real meaning of the word “research”. Research, according to Cambridge dictionary, means to do a detailed study of a subject in order to discover new information or to reach a new understanding. But literally a research means to do a search again, so do you think that after doing a research on something – for the second or many times – that the research still imperfect?! Some will argue about this question, and the answer would be yes. I really agree that there’s no perfect research even if it’s done for the second or million times.

I have certain examples in my mind to prove my opinion. In the old history of the geography of earth we knew that ancient people believed that the earth was a flat disk and that appeared in portraits of old maps. Proofs of this belief appear in some writing of poets like Homer and Hesiod and in the thoughts of some philosophers like Thales and Aristotle. I think if Ferdinand Magellan didn’t believe that the earth was round and made his researches and started to prove it, we won’t discover that earth was round in that time. So researches could be beneficial in two ways at least. One is to improve something that is known as true. Two is to correct or change something if something new discovered about it. Discoveries are never made without further investigation and research.

Research enabled the human to invent cars, rockets, televisions, telephones… etc. Without research, we won’t have this development from black and white TV to the colored one with multisystem to LCD to LED with 3d glasses to an endless improvement. After predicting the existence of radio waves by James Clerk Maxwell in 1864, in 1888, Heinrich Hertz was the first to demonstrate its existence. Researches and experiments led to inventing the microwave oven using the produced heat to cook the food. In 1952, Rosalind Franklin's research led to the discovery of DNA structure. Millions of examples could prove that after finishing the research, we have to start a new research to improve what we had discovered or to correct it if there were mistakes and that obviously could happen because the researcher is always a human who is most of the time mistaken.

Research is an endless process because with the current technology we have what we call it “diarrhea of information”. Research topics are subject to change in every moment due to the openness of the world in the field of discoveries and inventions. Some topics are really very complex to separate its information or to focus on it accurately. Things that are unnecessary are mixed with necessary other items that waste a lot of the time of the researcher and make the research process nearly impossible to be accomplished with further discoveries. But using different inputs will definitely lead to different outputs. To do a perfect research – I think – you need time, money, energy, manpower, reliable resources, good healthy environment that provokes creativity and some personal skills like patience and determination. These are some of the reasons that make no hope of perfect research.

We can rethink and reconsider what we have discovered and invented through the years to discover and invent further new things like housekeeper robots, computerized houses, natural limbs, going back and forth in time, holograms that can transfer humans through particles… etc. who knows?!  

In conclusion, I agree with Griffith’s statement that “There is no hope of doing perfect research.”  It is impossible to do perfect research   because of the difficulties with sources, time, money, energy, and manpower to name a few things. Researchers have always been greedy and hungry for learning new information, so research will be performed to tackle all the imperfections that exist in our world to create a new future that is always totally different from the past with new researches and discoveries. This research about imperfect research is done before for many times, and I did it again and others will do it again for the sake of perfection because it’s a human nature to search for perfection that will never be obtained. 

This research is done by: Ghada Mohammad Al-Saket

Resources:

1.      Russell, Tony, Allen Brizee, and Elizabeth Angeli. "MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 4 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 January 2012.

2.      “Research.” The Cambridge Advanced learners Dictionary. 2003. Software.

3.      “Flat Earth”. Wikipedia.org. Historical Development, 15 January 2012. Web. 20 January 2012.

4.      “Microwave”. Wikipedia.org, 19 January 2012. Web. 20 January 2012.

5.      “Microwave Oven”. Ideafinder.com, 15 August 2005. Web. 20 January 2012.

6.      Block, Deborah “Rosalind Franklin's Research Led to Discovery of DNA Structure” Voanews.com, 29 March 2011 Web. 20 January 2012.