Institute of Advanced Studies

Planning and conducting integrated research

What do we mean by integrated research?

Who is to say what is integrated and what is not? Scientists try to answer two main types of questions:

• What happens?
• Why does it happen?

The 'what' question is much easier to answer than the 'why' question. 

Many scientists think that experiments are the only way to answer why, but the truth is that the question is rarely answered completely, just as no hypothesis can be 'proven to be true'.

Experiments rarely answer the why question definitively, and they sometimes answer it incorrectly, because experiments are designed to examine one or two variables, while holding all other conditions equal, which is easier said than done.

One fundamental question is whether, particularly in complex fields such as community and ecosystem ecology, experiments are even relevant to understanding the why of natural phenomena.

Another issue is the degree to which our assumptions, procedures, and even statistical analysis prevent us from understanding the "why of the whats" that we observe and measure.

The attempt to consider all of these issues in the design and execution of a research project is the basis of integrated research.

Planning and conducting integrated research generally requires expertise in more disciplines than an individual scientist can master, and thus requires collaboration. It also requires skepticism and the willingness to challenge assumptions, including assumptions about experimental and statistical methods, throughout the entire course of the research. In some cases, a detailed study of "what happens" over a wide range of conditions can provide a more complete answer to the why question than can an experiment.

The challenge of integrated research is to determine the most probable whys of natural phenomena so we can make predictions based on an understanding of processes, not on merely the detailed description of "what happens under which conditions".

16 July 2008