View source for Doctor Valate's Guide To Science

[[Category:Arek’Jaalan]][[Category:Scientific Articles]][[Category:Science and Technology]]
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==Doctor Valate's Guide to Science==

This document is intended as a guide for people wishing to contribute to science in New Eden, particularly  the Arek'Jaalan initiative, so that scientific discoveries may be shared and discussed without excessive trouble.


====Introduction====

So, you want to be a scientist ? Good for you ! The world needs more scientists, jamming their brain into the cracks in the universe and levering it apart to see how it all works. Outstanding !

Now, before you get carried away, inserting your brain into everything that takes your fancy, stop, and think about what it is you are trying to do.

The primary purpose of science is to communicate a discovery to other people. So, how should we go about that ? Well, what I use as guidelines are the three C's of Clarity, Consistency, and Conciseness.


====Clarity====

One of the most important things for science is clarity. It should be clear what it is you were doing, what it is you may have found. Your documents should be clear to read. This does not necessarily mean they are easy to read, some scientific reports are hard going, but it should mean that a reader should be able to say, once they have read your documents, what it was all about.


====Consistency====

Your scientific documents should usually follow a consistent layout and format, this helps others to understand your work, and allows you to compare one project with another more easily. For scientific projects such as surveys of locations, a consistent format for a survey report greatly facilitates the data analysis process, as relevant information can be seen easily.


====Conciseness====

It usually helps to communicate a scientific discovery, if you can be concise about it. Enormous long paragraphs can mean the reader loses sight of the point you were trying to convey. To avoid this, try and keep sentences and paragraphs short and to the point.


====Excellent====

So, now that we have established three guidelines, lets look at how we can then begin to start inserting our brains into things. There are several kinds of documents that you might need, such as a proposal, where you describe what you want to do, a site report, where you describe something that you saw, and your finalised report, where you describe what the results of your investigations were. So lets take a look at them.


==A Project Proposal==

A project proposal is a document where you describe a project that you wish to undertake, so that other people may offer advice and suggestions. They are useful, so that your colleagues know what you are doing, which can help reduce duplication of effort, when people are working along similar lines. They can also be used to recruit help from other people, when your own resources might not be up to the task. A good project proposal allows people to see where their efforts and skills might be of most assistance.

A proposal has several sections, although not all project proposals have a need for all sections.

*An Introduction: This is where you can describe the background to your project, and why you are investigating the topic.

*A list of Aims: This is where you describe, in a short list, what you are going to try and achieve with your project.

*Existing knowledge: You can write some paragraphs about what is already known about the subject you are studying.

*Methodology: Here you describe how you are going to take measurements for your project.

*Data Analysis: This is where you describe how your measurements are going to be analysed.

*Time Frame: An estimate of how long your project is likely to take.

*Resource Requirements: An outline of what resources or people you might need for your project.


For my work, [[Project Theseus]], my original proposal can be seen [https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Arek%27Jaalan_Mailing_List_W4:_project_proposal_-_Project_Theseus_-_suggestions_%26_criticism_requested here]


==A Site Report==

A site report is a document showing your findings from a particular location that you visited. They can be very useful as data for other projects, especially when laid out in a clear, consistent fashion.

Arek'Jaalan's primary research is about the Sleepers, so I shall use them as an example for a site report.

A good report might contain the following:

* The name of the site, if it has one.
* The location of the site, i.e. system name, location within system, e.g. 'near planet IV'.
* Any unusual stellar phenomena that occurred (gas clouds, wormhole effects, that sort of thing).
* A diagram or picture showing the layout of the site, showing structures, initial locations of Sleeper vessels, a sense of scale is useful, such as the tactical overlay.
* Any interesting information found by examining structures or Sleeper vessels at the site.
* A list of Sleeper vessels present.
* Any unusual or notable behaviour by the Sleeper vessels.
* The date that the site was visited, so that any changes over time may be observed by yourself or others.

Much of this information might not seem immediately important, due to the limitations of ship sensors and what they are able to record. If the Sleeper vessels are clustered around a particular structure, there might be some importance to that structure, even if your ship sensors do not say there's anything noteworthy about that structure.

Even if you don't notice anything unusual, perhaps someone else might have an idea. So record as much information as you can.


==A Progress Report==

This is a simple document, purely for the purposes of keeping other colleagues informed of how things are progressing, in case assistance is needed, or a delay has been encountered, or other situations.


==A Finished Project Report==

This is one of the most important documents, which describes the results of your project.

It should include a description of the analysis of your results, such as "We compared the pictures taken this year, with the ones from last year", so that your readers can understand how you reached your conclusions.

It has your conclusions, where you describe what you found out, or if you did not find anything out. Sometimes in science, finding no evidence of something can be more important than finding conclusive evidence.

If you think there are other projects which could be carried out, to follow on from your work, then you could mention them as well.

Remember and acknowledge people that gave you assistance in your project, and mention them in your finished project report.

You can see how I did things for [[Project Theseus]] and there are many other Arek'jaalan projects as well, which could provide useful examples.


==Enjoy==

I hope this short guide has been useful to the reader.

Go forth and explore the mysteries of the Universe !


==Out of Character Notes==

Sometimes, it can be tempting to announce some kind of marvellous breakthrough or discovery that would have galaxy wide repercussions. Try not to do this, because it can cause a lot of unnecessary friction between players, and possibly even with CCP, and their vision of the lore.

It's often better to be understated in your comments, particularly if your project or research involves something that can be seen in space by other players. If you have screenshots of the sites, showing the npcs gathered round something, then you can say things like "this structure seems to be important", but try not to say things like "this structure is the central command hub of the entire facility", because it might not be, and CCP could change the description of things without warning.

When you have something that isn't visible in space, perhaps you are doing research on analysing materials or components, then again, announcing incredible breakthroughs can cause friction with other players, particularly because a lot of the lore says things like how nobody really understands what some of the devices are.

If you can't see any pattern in something when you thought there might be, don't be disheartened. Finding nothing is as good science RP as finding something. There could be all sorts of reasons why you didn't find a pattern. It can be fun thinking about those reasons, and discussing them IC with other players.

I mentioned in the site report section, that sometimes the NPCs might be clustered around a particular structure. Sometimes if you showinfo on that structure it says something interesting. Other times it just says something generic. But, have a thought about why it might just say something generic. Maybe the sleepers are protecting something that no longer exists ? Maybe the thing they're protecting doesn't show up on any of the scans that your equipment uses ? It can be fun discussing those kinds of theories with others as well.

Finally, the most important thing is to have fun !