You seem to have quite good research skills, do you have any advice for someone trying to find out if academia has considered something already? Especially if that someone doesn’t know that much about the field in question.
Try a bunch of queries; read good-looking papers, not for their results, but their discussion of background information. There’s no real good solution to the problem of known unknowns: “I’m sure this has been researched, but what’s the exact phrase or name it’s been given in academia?” I suspect this is one of the benefits of being in the community—when you discuss something or mention an idea, they can say ‘ah yes, X’ and now you have not the problem of an unknown known but the much much easier problem of a known unknown which you can just punch into Google Scholar and get to work.
read good-looking papers, not for their results, but their discussion of background information.
That’s a really good idea! I usually skip introductions and go for the “meat” of the results, just realized that it’s bitten me several times already, guess it’s time to unlearn that habit.
You seem to have quite good research skills, do you have any advice for someone trying to find out if academia has considered something already? Especially if that someone doesn’t know that much about the field in question.
Try a bunch of queries; read good-looking papers, not for their results, but their discussion of background information. There’s no real good solution to the problem of known unknowns: “I’m sure this has been researched, but what’s the exact phrase or name it’s been given in academia?” I suspect this is one of the benefits of being in the community—when you discuss something or mention an idea, they can say ‘ah yes, X’ and now you have not the problem of an unknown known but the much much easier problem of a known unknown which you can just punch into Google Scholar and get to work.
That’s a really good idea! I usually skip introductions and go for the “meat” of the results, just realized that it’s bitten me several times already, guess it’s time to unlearn that habit.