Research is all about producing information and selling the information you produce. The best researchers sell themselves with their information. Most research takes some leap of faith. People cannot have faith in research or information. They can only have faith in people.
My dad knows how to sell. No, my dad has learned how to sell. He tries. He fails. He takes calculated risks, not probabilistically conceived but based on instinct and experience. He sells his information and himself very well.
It is time for me to start following his example.
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I think this shows a social science bias. In general I would say just the reverse, that you can trust information from various instruments but that people are unreliable. A good theory is proved right regardless of the researcher. Selling is about the seller, but I am not sure it has that much to do with truth. I think that research is more about finishing than anything else. Knowing what projects are worth starting is probably a close second, but that is a problem for when you make professor.
I think you're absolutely right about the finishing thing.
You're probably right about the social sciences thing, but honestly, I think the natural sciences are becoming more and more like the social sciences. You can't just be right. You also have to tell and convince people you're right.
I saw James Buchanan yesterday, and all I could think was that he had devoted himself to the "intellectual life." There is no doubt that he was a tremendously bright man who had studied extremely hard. But I could have said what he was saying, but no one would have listened.
There is some of Gladwell's Outlier theory lurking in the background here.
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