Everything I Needed to Know (About Research) I Learned in the Seventh Grade

I’ve been grading final papers in my master’s classes. The students were to write a paper on an aspect of Paul’s theology – his understanding of the Torah, his pneumatology (understanding of the Holy Spirit), his hermeneutic (method of interpretation) in interpreting the Old Testament. My current crop of students tends to make the same mistakes students have made in this kind of assignment everywhere I’ve taught; namely, they confuse “research” with “book reporting.”

You see, at a certain level (high school; college, perhaps), it’s okay merely to report what the so-called “experts” or “authorities” or “scholars” have said about a subject, providing the reader with something of a “Reader’s Digest” or “Cliff Notes” version of the scholarly “consensus.” But in graduate school, where students are required to move beyond mere “book reporting” to real “research,” that’s no longer sufficient. At the graduate level, students are expected to sift the evidence themselves; draw their own conclusions; stake out a claim on the subject and climb out there on the branch with the others, as it were. And so, when I get a paper on, say, Paul’s pneumatology, that only catalogs (or worse, counts!) the views of the scholars on the subject as though that “settles it,” their grades suffer accordingly. That’s not “research,” I tell them; that’s merely “book reporting.”

Real research (irrespective of the discipline!) is evidence-based. As such it does three things: (1) it lays bare the evidence, as we now know it; (2) it follows the evidence wherever it leads; (3) it draws whatever conclusions the evidence demands. Period. Anything else is not “research.” I learned that (wait for it!) in the seventh grade at Canal Point Elementary School. That’s right, elementary school. My teacher at the time, Mr. Threlkeld, spent considerable time teaching us this wonderful method for acquiring truth called “the scientific method.” It was he who taught me to begin with the question and the evidence, rather than to “rig the results” by starting with the answer and ignoring the evidence. I cannot tell you how helpful that method has been to me through the years! I do not believe that I could do any serious thinking on any subject without it.

And that’s what I’ve tried to pass along to my students, wherever I’ve taught. I instill in them the fundamental notion that real research always conducts a “conversation” of sorts with the evidence. In the course of the conversation, it’s fine (indeed, even desirable!) to expand the conversation to include others who have looked at the same evidence (the opinions of the so-called “scholars”). But good research methodology always begins with the question, not the answer; with the evidence, not the scholars; with the primary conversation, not the secondary ones. I tell my students: “Until you’ve explored the evidence yourself, it’s best to lock the scholars out in the hall. Don’t let them in yet! If you let them in too soon, they’ll bully you, bias you, bludgeon you into their way of thinking. Begin your conversation with the evidence, not the scholars; and then, after you’ve carried on an extensive conversation with the evidence, it is all right to let in the scholars as ‘conversation partners’ and ‘colleagues’ with you. But do it too early, and you’ll only see what they want you to see!”

Unfortunately, it’s an error that is not confined to biblical studies – starting with the answer rather than the question; citing the opinions of the “scholars” as though that “settles it” without ever having explored the evidence. We’ve witnessed the same phenomenon in the field of the so-called “hard sciences” quite recently in the news surrounding the revelation that some “scientists” may have “doctored the data” on global warming so as to bias the evidence in favor of their preconceived perspective (read “answer”) that global warming is man-made. The case has been made, apparently with evidence, that some scientists (not all!), committed to the “answer” already pre-determined, conspired to drop from their research models any data that did not conform to their desired conclusion. When challenged at this point, their response has been curiously (and disappointingly) un-scientific: Well, even if we did fudge the data, the overwhelming consensus of the “experts” is that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. Well, that surely “settles it,” doesn’t it? We’re asked to trust the “consensus” of the same “experts” who fudged the data to begin with! I learned better than that in the seventh grade! Real research only treats the data as “evidence,” not the opinions of the so-called “experts” who can be, and often have been, quite wrong about their “assured results.”

Is global warming a natural phenomenon or a man-made one? I don’t know, but I do know this: Only the evidence will establish it.

And so, here’s a novel idea! Why don’t we start with the question rather than the answer, look at all the evidence and not just some of it, follow it wherever it leads us (whether it’s where we want to go or not!), and then draw whatever conclusions the evidence demands?

Mr. Threlkeld would be so proud.