Every year we have one major research project. This is a project we supposedly work on all year, gathering data and analyzing it till the big Presentation Day. The thing is, most times some of your results get fudged. Usually professors require a certain number of patients to be surveyed, and that number is usually near-impossible to attain. So some survey results are doubled, or female patients are counted as male, or a missing question gets filled in by hand...You get the picture.
I hate it that we "fudge numbers." But there is a sense of fear that our professor won't find our work as acceptable because we didn't meet his or her expectations. (But seriously, was it my fault that finals happened to be right around when you wanted me to gather data? and was it my fault that you weren't in your office in the few breaks we get from class? and have you any clue how many other classes I missed so we could work on this project, for a grade that hardly seems worth it?)
Anyway, sometimes it's impossible to complete the task without fudging something.
The question is, what do you do when your professor wants to make your "research" more public? what happens when suddenly your research isn't just a school project? Thank God our research wasn't about life-or-death issues (sort of). And in our report we did admit that much more research would have to be done to prove anything.
Sure makes me wonder how much research out there is actually legit.
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