Academic research: musings

[ariel]

Completely agree.
There are areas where research is straightforward and fully dependable on experimentally- provable data : " let's remove X and see what happens"
Study of weapons cannot employ experiments: it is strictly observational. It is much more tentative and more difficult to conduct.

But the principles of the two are by and large the same: noticing or suspecting something unusual or different, asking is it interesting and/or important, if not,- forgetting it, if yes - asking a question/hypothesis (why? where? when?), collecting material and published information, discussing the results without bias and providing an answer.

Without absorbing and rigorously employing general principles of research or, worse of, without dedicated training in these basic principles, book markets are getting flooded by amateurish publications that are full of errors, i.e. at the best colorful coffee table volumes, and at the worst - sources of misleading information for generations.
The " half-life of information" is measured in years. It is getting shorter, but still long enough to impress tyros and influence even professionals. Regretfully, in all our different areas of interest ( and, occasionally, competence, Alan Maisey and Albert van Zonneveld being an example in Indonesian, a strong group in Filipino, Elgood in Indian, Rivkin in Caucasian etc.), we all know such publications.