Years ago, I read a column by political scientist Stephen Walt.
In the article, he presents a concept that I haven’t encountered anywhere else. It’s something I share regularly.
There is a difference between the logic of discovery and the logic of presentation.
According to Walt, many scientific papers read like a narrative about the whole research process. First we read the literature, then we derived a hypothesis, then we collected data. Et cetera.
This is usually not a convincing way to present your results.
Not all the literature you read and not all data you collect are relevant for your message. And perhaps you confirmed your hypothesis only partially – but you may also have discovered some other interesting mechanism on the way.
The trick is to zoom out after your discovery, and have a fresh look at the presentation. For instance, with the following questions:
- What is my conclusion or plan?
- What would it require to convince my audience of this?
- What question have I answered, what problem have I solved?
- What does my audience need to know to understand the problem?
So you start at the end, and reason backward, toward your audience. This is hard, because you came from the other side: the beginning.
On top of that, you’ve probably been immersed for a long time in all kinds of discovery details. And you’ve collected all kinds of materials that you don’t want to throw away.
Still, my advice is: after the discovery, start with a blank piece of paper.
Regards,
Arnaud