2  Motive & Method

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About

Scientists are motivated by many different factors, but are also bound by the practical demands of research as a career. Rigor issues sometimes arise as a result of choices made for expediency. But, it doesn’t need to be this way! Committing to rigorous practices can make one a more effective and efficient scientist, while remaining true to one’s personal values and ideals in pursuing science.

  1. Reflect on your own motivations for pursuing science.

  2. Examine the connections between your motivations and the practice of research.

A word from your lab mate

Innate Motives

The daily bustles and pressures of scientific work can sometimes leave us somewhat disconnected from the basic ideals that defined our path in life. Below, you’ll each take a moment to revisit the motives that drove you to pursue a career in science in the first place.

Proper rigor ensures that research aligns with common values, producing results that are reliable, useful, and can be built on in the future by both others and oneself.

Extrinsic Incentives

The unfortunate truth is that our work is shaped by many factors beyond the ideals that drove us to pursue it, and many of these are legitimate and valid to consider and care about. Though an extreme focus on metrics can distort the research process (Joelving 2024), some performance indicators can also map to reasonable expectations for scientists so long we are mindful not to let them capture the work entirely.

There is a common misconception — and by extension, a persistent stigma – that good research rigor is at odds with actions that lead to professional success. The reasoning behind this claim generally relies on three ideas:

  1. Doing rigorous research means taking additional care.
  2. Doing rigorous research requires additional training.
  3. Non-rigorous researchers take shortcuts to maximize publications.

All of these statements are true, but where the myth really takes root is in a misunderstanding of the implications that they each have on a career in science:

Statement Misconception Reality
Doing rigorous research requires taking additional care and being more mindful when devising your workflow. Additional care will slow you down, decreasing your output and hurting your publication metrics! Rigor leads to greater efficiency, less backtracking, and more reliability, ultimately saving time & effort.
Doing rigorous research requires that
you continuously engage in additional learning, training, and review of
research methodology.		 Additional training means that you
have to spend more time studying and learning, and therefore less time researching!		 By ensuring that you really understand
the work you’re doing, rigor training makes you a better & more effective investigator.
Non-rigorous researchers take
shortcuts in order to maximize publications.		 Not taking shortcuts puts you at a disadvantage relative to less rigorous researchers! “Shortcuts” really just means missed mistakes — careers built by blinding yourself to mistakes don’t last.

If you’re new to implementing rigor-related measures in your work, this may sound a bit abstract. So in order to really drive this point home, let’s take a look at some concrete examples of how good research practices can benefit both the rigor of your work and the success of your career:

Rigorous Raven crying and lying down in a puddle of tears with a big bag labeled 'Mail' on their back.

If you pre-register a study design and then execute on it, you get a guaranteed publication regardless of the outcome!

If your lab commits to good organizational
practices (e.g. lab journals, record-keeping), you’ll save time & money by avoiding logistical mistakes!

Rigorous Raven typing on a keyboard and thinking carefully about code and past versions of the same code.


Rigorous Raven with arms crossed and feeling frustrated, as three rodents have very different appearances: one has wings, and another is very buff and lifting weights.

If you embed reproducible practices in your data and code, it will be easier for others to use & build on, increasing impact!

Proper rigor makes you a better, more effective scientist.

Naturally, metrics of professional competence may vary from field to field and career path to career path. Below, each of you will get a chance to list some of the measures by which your job performance is judged, brainstorm some of the ways in which rigor can help you meet and improve these, and browse the collection of answers the broader Community For Rigor has thought of.

Takeaways

  1. Proper rigor ensures that research aligns with common values.

  2. Proper rigor can make me a better, more effective scientist.

References

Joelving, Frederik. 2024. “Questionable Firms Tempt Young Doctors with ‘Easy’ Publications,” May. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.z7vuqtq.