6 Comments
User's avatar
Ira L. Whitlock's avatar

Love your article. I have a question about the concept of 'me-search' (as I'm very much guilty of it). What research topic is not chosen for personal motivation? To support, to oppose, to change, to deepen, or, simply, to understand ourselves - all research to some degree is personal and self-motivated, if a researcher can hope to create a sustainable study habit. Or is the point of ‘me-search’ more about confirmation bias? Anyway, keep it up :)

Expand full comment
Nora Keller's avatar

Thank you! I wouldn’t even call “me-search” a concept as much as a term academics throw around flippantly when they work on a paper that sort of overlaps with their own life. I fully agree with you - all research is personal! In fact, it always annoys me when quantitative researchers claim some sort of inherent objectivity - all research is personal and no research is objective. It’s why I love writing my newsletter — my research can be as openly personal as I want it to be!

Expand full comment
Ira L. Whitlock's avatar

Yes, this is exactly what I meant, you put it so well! If there's on thing I disliked about academia was the necessity to hide my motivations to study something, as if making my paper impersonal would make it magically more authoritative... I think that if people were more honest about their POV/interests, research would be less mystifying most of the times!

Expand full comment
M.C.'s avatar

I love this, and all of this resonates. So relieved that my toddler is an unstoppable force of his own with incredibly strong opinions and willpower to follow through (that I lack), so it doesn't matter what I think we should do, he's just going to do what he plans to do anyway.

Expand full comment
Tom's avatar

Very nice post!

Expand full comment
Nora Keller's avatar

Thanks!!!

Expand full comment