Professors: Gilberto Camara and Pedro Andrade.
Welcome to the homepage of the Research Methods course for graduate students at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The aim of the course is to teach students how to choose a research topic, perform experiments, and prepare scientific papers and presentations describing their work.
- W. Booth, G. Colomb, J. Williams, “The Craft of Research”. University of Chicago Press, 1995 (Excellent! Every researcher (or aspiring researcher should read this book).
- David Lindsay, “Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words”. CSIRO editions, 2011.
- Advice on Scientific Papers by Nature
- The Science of Scientific Writing, Gopen and Swan.
- Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students, Penn State Univ
- How to Give a Good Research Talk, Simon Peyton Jones.
- Rethinking Presentations in Engineering and Science
- How to Write a Good Systems Paper
- Evaluating Computer Scientists and Engineers For Promotion and Tenure
We start by discussing the notions of "scientific method" that is ingrained in the research community and that is reflected in the IMRaD style required by most academic journals. We also discuss its limitations and criticism.
Lecture: On the scientific method
Read the paper “The Future of the Brazilian Amazon”, published in Science, 2001. Then write an essay (3-4 paragraphs) which considers the following questions:
- Did the paper follow the scientific method? Explain your response.
- What are the weaknesses and strengths of the paper?
- Should it have been accepted by Science?
- How did it get accepted in Science?
Read the essay Is the scientific paper a fraud? by Nobel Prize winner Sir Peter Medawar. Then write an essay (3-4 paragraphs) which addresses the following questions:
- What was the author’s motivation to present his views?
- What is the central argument made by the author?
- Why does the author criticise the IMRAD model?
- What evidence does the author present to support his argument?
The lecture discusses thesis planning, with a strong focus on how to define a good research problem, particularly in Earth System Science and Computer Science, and how to develop, manage, and publish a graduate thesis.\
Lecture: Planning your research
Prepare a one-slide presentation outlining you research plan. Use the template:
- "I'm going to study (topic)_____
- "because I want to discover__(question)_____"
- "to understand (relevance)____
The lecture examines ethics in scientific research, combining philosophical foundations with practical realities of modern science. It argues that scientific ethics are shaped less by absolute moral principles and more by community practices, incentives, and power structures. It also describes well-known cases which show a complex interplay of personal interest and objective results, including Eddington's 1919 experiment, the dispute by Darwin and Wallace on Evolution, the Rosalind Franklin affair in DNA structure discovery. It argues that the pressure for publication has substantially increased malpractice in Science. We present recent rankings on Brazilian scientific production and discuss their implications for young researchers and PhD candidates.
Lecture: Science in practice
Identify three influential papers on your research area. Write a brief evaluation of each paper (3-4 paragraphs) addressing the following questions:
- What is the main scientific contribution of the paper?
- What is the importance of the paper? Why is it influential?
- What is the relevance of the paper for your work?
The presentation argues that difficulties in publishing scientific work are not only due to poor English, but mainly to weaknesses in research planning, methodology, and argumentation. The presentation stresses that strong arguments are essential to convince readers. Writing quality alone is insufficient if the argumentation is weak. We follow Toulmin's "The Logic of Arguments" to identify the four essential parts of scientific writing: arguments, evidences, warrants, and qualifications.
Lecture: The logic of arguments
Pick one of three influential papers you selected in Assignment 3. In the Introduction, Discussion and Conclusion section, identify paragraphs where the authors present strong arguments. Then write an evaluation of those arguments considering if the authors also provided evidences, warrants and qualifications.
This presentation offers practical guidance on clear, effective scientific writing, emphasising that good writing is achieved through simplicity, structure, and careful revision. Writing should aim to express complex ideas in simple language, favouring concrete words over abstract or vague ones. Brevity and precision can carry strong meaning. Excess words weaken impact, while concise phrasing strengthens it. Paragraphs should move from old information to new, linking smoothly to surrounding text. Well‑structured paragraphs dramatically improve readability and argument strength. LLMs can assist with improving drafts, reviewing familiar literature, and simple coding, but they tend to produce verbose, shallow, or uncritical text. Writers are warned not to become “stochastic parrots” by blindly reproducing AI-generated language.
Lecture: Writing advice
Present an evaluation of a PhD dissertation (for doctoral students) or MSc thesis (for master's students) in your field. You are free to choose the thesis. The evaluation should be in writing in no less than 4 paragraphs and no more than 2 pages.
- What scientific question served as the basis for the work?
- How does the proposed methods answer the scientific question?
- What experiment was conducted to validate the hypothesis?
- Was the proposed objective achieved?
- What, ultimately, was produced as a body of knowledge?
The doctoral students will also make an oral presentation, while the master students need only to submit the essay.