GRE Example Essay: Researchers should limit their investigations

GRE Analyze an Issue Essay Prompt:

Claim: Researchers should not limit their investigations to only those areas in which they expect to discover something that has an immediate, practical application.

Reason: It is impossible to predict the outcome of a line of research with any certainty.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.

Watch the video where I write this essay LIVE: https://youtu.be/D9JRiBom3vA?si=UgOTFGYYhXmzkvl5

Brainstorming:

Mostly agree – should not limit investigations

Body 1: impossible to predict the outcome of research with certainty (example)

• Good research is usually uncertain

• Science is about learning more, especially when we don’t know what to expect

• Needs assessment – we don’t know what to find, and we don’t bias what is going to come

Body 2: expand on limitations (immediate, practical application – something that came up with an application a long time after the study was started)

• Sometimes we come up with information that will be useful at a later date

• Biology of octopi – we didn’t know about the application of their regeneration at the time, but the info is now useful after we learned a lot about how human stem cells work

Body 3: concession – application of research is important because we want to advance our society (think about the resources that go into research) BUT limiting is still bad (because of reasons ½) AND it’s very difficult to be fair in determining what is useful and what is not

Essay:

In science, we want to learn as much as possible about ourselves and the world around us. Because there is so much to know, it is difficult to be able to predict the outcome of something if it has not been studied before. As a result, I believe we should not, in general, limit our investigations to topics that we expect to produce an immediate application. This is because being able to predict the outcome of research with certainty is very rare and it is often possible to use findings from research in applications years after they have been found.

As mentioned, good research is usually uncertain. This can hold true for all fields, and both qualitative and quantitative research. Science is about learning more, and trying to expand our understanding of the world around us. As such, new information can be difficult to predict. For example, a lot of my work is conducting needs assessments of various communities. Before we go into a project, it is best to keep an open mind and not predict what the outcome will be because we do not want to bias the results. Sometimes, participants can even inform us of something that we did not know about before, and this can enhance our understanding of that community’s needs. This prevents our research from forcing a top-down mindset that can product erroneous answers. When we begin studies, we prefer to have a strong question but no strong prediction of the results so that we can produce higher-quality data. This also leaves us open to finding completely new and surprising things that we would have missed if we had certain rigid expectations.

Moreover, information gathered from a study that does not expect immediate application gives it more leeway and could become more useful at a later date. For example, a good study with no immediate application was the study of regeneration of octopi arms. At the time, this information would not have been very useful, as there was little that people could do with it, even zookeepers who interacted with octopi often. However, reserachers ended up finding that this data was extremely beneficial to understanding how human stem cells could be farmed and used in amputees in the early 2000s. These data on octopi fast-forwarded human stem cell research by a decade according to one newspaper article because of the similarities in biology between octopi and humans. There are countless similar examples of findings whose applications were not discovered until decades later, but pushed forward scientific understanding by decades. The scientists involved (and the general public as a result) greatly benefitted from having the previous information. 

Application of research is important because we want to advance our society. Oftentimes, good research can take significant human and material resources, so they should not go to waste. However, because of the unpredictability of research results, and the fact that some information could prove invaluable in the future, it is still valuable to pursue topics that have no immediate use. Furthermore, because we often do not know what research will produce before we have conducted it, it is almost impossible to be fair in determining what is useful and what is not. In the end, application of research findings should only be one consideration of whether or not to conduct the study.

Research can often be unpredictable and results may be useful in surprising ways, even if we don’t realize that at the beginning. Despite the potential opportunity cost of “useless” research, findings may end up benefitting society in a variety of ways.