The Critical Assessment of Research: Traditional and New Methods of Evaluation

Citation

Hart, N. (2011), "The Critical Assessment of Research: Traditional and New Methods of Evaluation", Library Management, Vol. 32 No. 1/2, pp. 132-132. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121111102656

This has been one of the most enjoyable and thought provoking books I have read for a while. Not only is it well written in a style which is easy to read, the authors use of narrative in the case studies leaves you with a very strong message about how to assess research and how all researchers are influenced by their belief systems and previous experiences.

For the past three years I was managing a program where the research scientists kept emphasising that only peer‐reviewed literature was valid research publication. My gut feeling was that there was a lack of recognition of community and indigenous knowledge in the scientific process. This book effectively demonstrated to me that this gut reaction was correct. We all love to have our beliefs affirmed so this probably influenced my enjoyment of this book.

Examples of case studies we can relate to are:

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  Hormone Replacement Therapy – where the warnings about the danger of this therapy were effectively ignored and the pharmaceutical companies were sponsoring the main scientific author (who was also peer reviewed with a positive outcome).

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  The Bell Curve – and IQ assessment – which originally had a strong racial basis.

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  Enron – it was not in Anderson's interests to expose the illegal activities of Enron if they were to retain such a valuable contract.

The book left me thinking about the importance of librarians and their role in providing a balance of research when they undertake a reference/research query. We have a moral obligation to our clients to give all sides of the story when researching a topic. We have no control over what then happens with it but we can alert our clients to the breadth of results that are available.

I also think that those librarians working in database content and digital repositories need to be able to explain the importance of exposing grey literature. Often, this material does not make it to the commercial publishers and may be the only evidence refuting a particular trend in the research.

Also, we need to support and encourage publicly funded research. Under the current arrangements in Australia, publicly funded research must be made publicly available. Often, this material is grey literature and hopefully under the new Gov2.0 recommendations, accepted by the Australian Government, funding of research will continue and those results be publicly available.