--- title: Outline of the style of social science research that Vipul Naik advocates author: Issa Rice created: 2016-12-12 date: 2017-06-03 --- # Summary This page intends to describe the style of social science research that Vipul Naik advocates, in the most matter of fact way possible -- I don't intend to describe my own thoughts of it because they are complicated and still not well-formed. I try to convey both the theory/intuition for why the approach might make sense as well as what actually happens in practice (if it differs from the theory). The general thrust of the approach, as I understand it, is as follows: * For inputs to research, emphasize conducting online surveys and writing quick Facebook posts to gather thoughts. De-emphasize academic papers. * During the research, do things in places that are publicly visible and where the record of changes is accessible (e.g. Git repository and Wikipedia). * For outputs of the research, separate them into tiers in terms of importance: quick notes or graphs that can fit into pre-existing work, medium-size articles that can build up general knowledge, and major articles that comprehensively argue some point. The small- and medium-size outputs are called a "paper trail" or "digital trail". * When choosing the venue of outputs, emphasize the expected number of pageviews and how the contribution topically fits in. De-emphasize comfort and the building of a personal brand. # Existing writings on this and related subjects * ["My three guiding principles"](http://vipulnaik.com/blog/my-three-guiding-principles/) by Vipul * ["Sponsored Wikipedia editing"](http://vipulnaik.com/sponsored-wikipedia-editing/) by Vipul * [Vipul's contract work repository on GitHub](https://github.com/vipulnaik/contractwork), which includes a comprehensive list of things he has paid to create # Background As of December 2016, I have been working with Vipul regularly since April 2016. # Caveats Some caveats to note about this page: * This page has not been reviewed by Vipul, so I might be mischaracterizing parts of his approach. * According to the approach, I have not yet gone through all of the steps. In other words, I am still midway in following all of the steps outlined here. # Output levels See Vipul's ["Debugging My Apparent 2016 Stagnation" § Significant shift to producing longer and much more thoroughly researched content](http://vipulnaik.com/blog/debugging-my-apparent-2016-stagnation/). # The paper trail Although this is not a requirement, in general the "paper trail" part of the research comes in several standard forms: * Wikipedia articles about parts of the topic * Wikipedia timelines of some aspect of the history of the topic There seems to be a psychological aspect to the paper trail beyond providing value to others: it's motivating to see that one's writing is getting pageviews, that there is *some* progress being made on difficult questions, that one's time has not been a complete waste, and so forth. The paper trail can have other benefits that are not as important: * It's a way to put things out in public so others can critique your thinking. * It provides a sort of detailed outline of your thinking. # Projects that use or have used this approach To my knowledge and recollection, two projects use this approach: * Some parts of [*Open Borders: The Case*](http://openborders.info) * My own dive into global health # Changes in major output In April 2017, Vipul published ["Why I stopped quarterly reviews, and what replaces them"][stop_quarterly] on his blog. In the post he describes how his thinking on the "major articles" part of the research process has changed: > My goal with both these kinds of posts is to, essentially, write them *only* > once the ideas are all in my head and reasonably clear, so that it's just a > straight exercise of transcribing from my head to the computer. Given that I > have no particular pressure to "publish", I believe it does not make much > sense to artificially try to put in custom, "hacky" effort to push out posts > of either of the above kinds in a way that interrupts the flow of the larger > projects I am working on. > > To give an idea of what I used to do, and am now choosing against: there is > this strategy where I would decide to work hard on pushing out a wrapper post > about a topic I've been learning about, even if I didn't feel like I was > fully ready to write it, or knew all the relevant facts. Examples of the > kinds of topics I am talking about: understanding trends in Wikipedia > pageviews, or understanding the history of immigration enforcement in the > United States since 1986. My past strategy was: I would just draft it, pull > in a fact from here and a fact from here, revisit, redraft, rewrite, and soon > get something that looked okay. And there was a time, early on, when I found > that this kind of effort helped me focus and collate information that I would > not otherwise have interest in systematically grasping. And I still respect > this approach. > > However, my current belief is that in this sort of situation, it's better to > just keep collating background information in accessible formats. such as > continued work on the Wikipedia Views website, to make it easier and easier > to look up Wikipedia view trends, or work on timeline of immigration > enforcement in the United States. And then to start working on the wrapper > post only when I feel I have enough to say that I can just sit down and say > it. # Ways in which this approach differs from other approaches * Unlike writing several papers or writing several blog posts on one's blog, this approach has more variety in publication venue. # See also * [[Research habits]] # External links * ["Making Decisions Under Uncertainty"](https://medium.com/lessons-from-mckinsey/making-decisions-under-uncertainty-c1d1dfbb02b2) [stop_quarterly]: https://vipulnaik.com/blog/why-i-stopped-quarterly-reviews-and-what-replaces-them/ "“Why I stopped quarterly reviews, and what replaces them”. Vipul Naik. April 9, 2017. Retrieved June 3, 2017."