How do you know your research skills are working?

Research skills itself are matter of practise. The more you practise them in your writings, and readings, it keep on enhancing and eventually it gave you sense of confidence that your inquisitiviness is still viable.

I think as researcher to that I tipically used to prepare an Excel table with the most relevant article in the field pro and against the theory. Nowadays I also use AI e.g. ChatGPT, Claude and Bard to build some baseline hypotheses and confront that with the literature. It speeds up the hypothesis creation

A good researcher requires a clinical perspective; wherein, attitude is key: relinquish all preconceptions, biases and expectations in order to maintain an open mind. Remember that negative results are opportunities leading to reassessment, with that inviting new approaches that lead to positive outcomes.

As a real-world practitioner, I find planning to be a crucial part of any research project. It mainly depends on how well you understand the ideas you want to test. At this stage, it's important to list down the steps you want to take to prove or disprove your ideas. No one gets it right the first time; it's a process where you learn and improve with each attempt, like a feedback loop. Having clear thoughts and knowing your end goal helps make this process smoother. A solid plan is the key to a good research project.

In academic settings, you tipically have to present the plan in advance to a funding agency (NIH, DFG..) that would require you to carefully also thank at costs, planning, and technologies to be applied. Sometimes it is a problem if you are a young researcher because you do not have enough literature and you are not considered an expert in the matter.

In academia, it is quite easy to track the outcome because the results are generally peer-reviewed publications. Unfortunately, negative results are not typically awarded/published and it is a major critic in the academic world

In the field of influence, reciprocity is one of the pillar therefore receiving and sending feedback is very important as long as they are constructive and help the science to move forward.

Here are some key research skills that are applicable in many jobs: 1. Meta learning: the ability to know how to learn is key in many fast paced environments as it allows you to quickly adapt and develop new skills as needed. 2. High level thinking: research experience gives you the ability to not just solve problems you are given, but to ask the right questions. This is often a rare and highly demanded skill. 3. Problem decomposition: research experience allows you to break problems into smaller manageable parts that can be solved in a reasonable time. 4. Solution prototyping: Research experience allows you to quickly develop prototype solutions to difficult problems.

Transferring research skills is something that academics often fail to perform because of their narrow focus on the topic. Therefore, what is learned in the academic curriculum (bachelor, master or PhD) is undervalued by the researcher itself.