{"id":4549,"date":"2026-02-02T01:36:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T06:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=4549"},"modified":"2026-01-17T07:46:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T12:46:52","slug":"risk-and-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2026\/02\/risk-and-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Risk and Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the product of research.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There seems to be a misunderstanding about the product of research. I saw this article about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-026-00160-4\">risk in research<\/a>. The idea is that researchers are often risky. Huh? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Risk management asks, &#8220;What could possibly go wrong?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That is something we do when managing a project that is supposed to produce a system, service, or something like that. Build a new car in six months. Whoa, that isn&#8217;t much time for that task. What are the risks? There are many things that could go wrong given the short span of time for that task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now let&#8217;s move to research. Let&#8217;s try a new idea on an old problem. We are trying to produce a system, service, or something like that. We are trying to understand if the new idea works on the old problem. What might be wrong with the new idea? Many things. Let&#8217;s try it and see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I research: I try a new idea on an old problem. The idea doesn&#8217;t work. That is successful research. We learned that this idea doesn&#8217;t work. Great. Let&#8217;s use that knowledge. For example, we have learned that standing on the top of a step ladder is dangerous. That idea for gaining more height failed. The knowledge of that failure and danger is good. We know not to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trying new ideas on old problems when the ideas fail is not risk. That is good research. It seems that the people at that publication I linked would know that by now. Shame on them for not understanding research and risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips It seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the product of research. There seems to be a misunderstanding about the product of research. I saw this article about risk in research. The idea is that researchers are often risky. Huh? Risk management asks, &#8220;What could possibly go wrong?&#8221; That is something we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,20,9,267,44],"tags":[220,142,132,268,166],"class_list":["post-4549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knowledge","category-learning","category-management","category-research","category-risk","tag-knowledge","tag-learning","tag-management","tag-research","tag-risk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4550,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions\/4550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}