There Is No Hope of Doing Perfect Research (griffith, 1998, P97) – Discuss
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There is no hope of doing perfect research (Griffith, 1998, p97). Do
you agree?
I agree that there is no hope of doing perfect research as research, in its very nature, is a continuous process and hence evolving as the new statistics and new methodologies become available. The conclusions reached at one point in time may entirely change when juxtaposed against new statistics obtained over an extended period of time. Moreover, there are different ways of analyzing the available data. Different people may reach at different conclusions based on the same statistics and the two different views may be equally forceful. Sometimes, the research in the related fields compels the social scientists to review the conclusions reached in any one area of research and relate it to other areas.
An interesting case in example is the conclusion reached at about the effectiveness of aid in developing countries. Craig Burnside and David Dollar (2000, p.84) in their famous study in 2002 found out that “Aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and trade policies but has little effect in the presence of poor policies”. This study had had a deep impact on the lending policies of International Financial Institutions vis-à-vis developing countries as they linked aid to large-scale fiscal and monetary reforms in respective countries. Later, William Easterly, Rosss Levins and David Roodman reassessed the links between aid, policy, and growth using more data. Burnside and Dollar had used data up to 1993. Easterly, Levins and Roodman reconstructed the data from original sources, added new data through 1997 and included additional countries in their research. The observations they came up with were different from original. They raised well-founded reservations regarding the conclusion that aid promotes growth in countries with sound policies. They did not conclude that aid was ineffective but they opined to limit the claim regarding the effectiveness of aid in the presence of sound policies. By adding additional of data they raised new doubts about the effectiveness of aid even in the presence of good fiscal and monetary policies. Easterly, Levins and Roodman concluded that the original work stimulated additional work and further research will provide answers to many conflicting questions.
An equally interesting research area that reflects imperfectness of research is the conclusions reached by many social scientists regarding causes of terrorism. Many leaders in the world also indicated in the aftermath of 9/11 that it was the poverty and deprivation in the developing countries that were providing the harboring ground to the terrorist networks. This was called as “Rooted in Poverty” Hypothesis by Piazza who reached at entirely different conclusion regarding the causes of terrorism. Piazza refers to the public survey made by Krueger and Maleckova in Palestine about suicide bombing that indicated that poor or poorly educated Palestinians were no more likely to either support or participate in suicide terrorist attacks than were more affluent and better educated Palestinians. Piazza concluded that it was not the poverty only that was a reason for increased terrorist activity. He invited the attention of the policy makers to other factors such as social cleavages in poor and developed yet divided