> 1) give up any hope of getting wealthy from your research ideas.

Given that the subject matter is beekeeping, this is
not too big a leap for anyone, is it?

> 2) get some hard-nosed training in statistics

Better yet, get a real statistician involved.
Statisticians are the "lawyers and accountants"
of science in that they do your books, and they
keep you out of trouble.  Statistics is a field
in its own right, not something you can treat as
a sideline.

> 3) and the "real" sciences, such as math, physics, or chemistry.

Wow, if this requirement were applied to the current
group of researchers publishing in this field, conferences
could be held around a single table at the "International
House of Pancakes"!  Entomology and biology tend to be the
majors of these folks, not a field were a great deal of
emphasis is placed upon or rigor is required in the area of
the "hard sciences" (as opposed to the "softer" sciences,
like Biology, or the very soft and squishy Psychology and Economics).

The difference is that "hard" science devises experiments to
determine causation, while "soft" sciences infer causation from
observations under conditions that are often hard to replicate.

> 4) insulate yourself from outside and/or vested interests by walling
> yourself off (financially) in an independently funded or gov't.
> organization.

Or, just fund your own research, as was common for the bulk of
the history of science itself.  The entire concept of the
full-time, paycheck-collecting researcher is a new and highly
speculative development.  The so-called "amateur scientist" was
all there was for quite some time, and the term "amateur" has only
recently been used by those in the employ of government, academia,
or industry as a term of disparagement to give the impression that
they somehow might be doing better work just because of the paychecks.

While institutional funding has made "big science" possible, through
the provisioning of expensive capital assets required to do the
leading-edge "big projects", it is safe to say that the funding
required to set up a simple double-blind study on 60 of his own hives
for 2 or 3 seasons is not beyond the resources of any motivated individual.
(Let's ballpark it as equal to the cost of a 2-week vacation.)

The shocking thing is that the current state of the art in beekeeping
related research simply does not include the phrases "double blind",
"60 hives" or "2 - 3 seasons", so anyone taking such an approach would
be doing much better than the current crop of independently funded
and government/university funded folks.

> 5) divest yourself of any financial links to industry.

See (1) and (4) above.

> 6) REALLY THINK about the problem

Better yet, admit that others can see what you won't or can't,
and send your experimental design around and solicit critiques
from people like John, who know a bit about "good" versus "bad"
experimental design.  Any number can play, and the more the merrier.

Also, recall that not all axioms are inherently correct.  :)

> 7) make sure you never adopt an affection for any of your theories,

When it is proven over and over that "beauty is truth, and truth beauty",
it is very very hard to not be seduced by an elegant and simple
explanation.  I think that this requirement is an ideal, and not one
that can be demanded as a prerequisite.  Hence, "double-blind" set-ups
are the way to go.

> 8) null hypothesis,

See (6) above.

> 9) always have control groups randomly mixed in with your tests.

Better yet, construct a double-blind set-up the person taking the
readings has no idea which hives have been subjected to what.
This is done in medical trials all the time, yet when "medicine"
is to be applied to bees, this approach is almost universally
ignored.

It is among the most powerful ways to avoid all charges of "bias",
as only the scorekeeper (the statistician) knows which one is what
one, and what one is who, and he ain't telling 'till all the data
is in.

> 10) talk to a real statistician before the tests start (hopefully
> before you spend money setting up a flawed experiment).

See (2), but understand that experimentalists are also important
to this process, so see (6)

> 11) expect that your character and bias will be questioned.

You forgot to include parentage, sexual habits, personal hygiene... :)

> Any research which starts out to prove a pet hypothesis has already
> prostituted itself, and is only anecdotal.

It follows that the inverse is also true, yet somehow, setting out
to disprove something is not considered nearly as questionable.


        jim
        (Who, not long ago, ran a division of Bell Labs with
        5,000 researchers, was actually assigned a "quota"
      of one Nobel Prize every 4 years, and has seen
      every one of John's suggestions ignored more often
      than he would care to admit.)

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