It's 4pm on what feels like the longest Tuesday of my life. It is a beautiful day outside, glorious sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. Despite this, my little head feels like it's full of fog, with only random words, concepts and definitions floating out of the mist and crashing into each other. This does not give me a sunny disposition to match the weather.
My task for today was to finish the introduction to one of my chapters, something I didn't expect to take me all day as I only had one more section to go. What I've actually ended up doing since I arrived at my desk is writing and re-writing the same few paragraphs over and over. Each time I think I've wrapped my head around a definition and whether one author is using a different one compared to another it has been back to the drawing board as the definition really is crucial to the point I'm trying to make. My head feels like it has gone through the wringer and the more I try to understand the further away it all seems to get.
(The concept is hypermnesia by the way and I've decided that it means an increase in recall accuracy across multiple interviews where the net gain of new information is more than the loss of information - they can take it or leave it)
Several studies have based their definition on one paper and all, in their own blundering way, have regurgitated that definition for their own use. As far as I could tell they were all on the same page, all talking about the same thing, all making sense. Yes, some of them had found contradictory results but as far as I was concerned that was down to the glaringly obvious differences in their methods, nothing to do with the definitions.
I then came across a more recent paper from a well respected psychologist who boldy claims that X didn't get the same results because their definition and way of measuring hypermnesia is more strict and difficult than everyone elses. Hmmm... I thought, that's odd. I would like to think I would have noticed something like that...
So it began. I have been back over six or seven papers today, reading them in their entirity, reading their definitions only, placing them side by side and reading the definitions one after the other, and I even roped in an office mate to try and help wade through my confusion. After all this I still have no idea whether I'm coming or going, who thinks what and whether it actually makes a difference at all so why have I spent ALL DAY trying to figure it out...argh!
What I think it all boils down to is some pretty shoddy writing on a few authors behalf. One paper, for example, contradicts its own definition within the same paragraph. The original catalyst for this day of dispair, claims that X is using a stricter measure but then, from what I can tell, goes on to use the same measure themselves. The same measure, in fact, that everybody else chuffing used - so why kick up the fuss in the first place? I've gone around in so many circles that I've almost lost the point I was trying to make in the first place. I've now convinced myself it must have been a stroke of pure genius otherwise I wouldn't have spent so long trying to figure this all out. It better have been, but now I'm not so sure.
We had a training session a few weeks ago on the clarity of writing and how important it was and this has been a painful experience that reinforces just how true that is. If someone with a background in your area can't fathom what on earth your point is then why bother? The purpose of research is to gain an understanding about how things work and to try and add to the general knowledge of the world. If people can't work out what you've done, what you found or what you mean then you might as well pack up, go home and give your funding to someone who can clearly express themselves.
Clarity is what we would all like, what would make our lives easier. Please leave your ambiguity at the door and make some chuffing sense.
Is that too much to ask?
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