High impact research: Blending basic and applied methods

Abstract

Vannevar Bush's 1945 book Science: The Endless Frontier, made a sharp distinction between basic (or pure) and applied research, urging strong government support for academic basic research and warning that “applied research invariably drives out pure”. He also suggested the “linear model” in which basic research leads to applied research, and then commercial development. These biased views are still widely held, so a fresh analysis is needed to repair the damage and to provide a guiding framework for scientific researchers across many disciplines. The High-Impact Research framework integrates current concepts that have been voiced by many people: 1) Science research projects that address basic and applied questions, seek theoretical and practical outcomes, and are inspired by curiosity-driven as well as mission-driven goals are likely to have the greatest payoffs. 2) These increased expectations may require teamwork from multidisciplinary participants and from those who are skilled with multiple research methods: randomized controlled trials, ethnographic case studies, automatic logging, retrospective analysis, etc. Teamwork can be difficult, but has a stronger possibility of producing breakthrough results. 3) Since complex problems are resistant to reductionist approaches and small laboratory controlled experiments, high-impact can be achieved by using new research methods that depend on interventions that are evaluated in large-scale systems. Such repeated interventions constitute case studies that can provide evidence to support or falsify hypotheses. Guidelines for promoting and reporting rigorous case studies will accelerate progress.