20 effective ways to kill a research(er)* – Just for Fun!

*Although this post is inspired by the real incidents, however any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Research is fascination! but for whom?? It is a matter of adventure for a core researcher or a fresher, but burden for busy bees. Majority of us take it as a part of our allotted duties. Everyone says do research, some undertake and only few understand it.

This post is dedicated to all those who inspire me to identify the 20 effective ways to kill a research(er). Here they are:

1. Undertake research to “please” authorities (to get promotional, political or official advantages)
2. “Cut-Copy-Past Formula” – This CCPF is very effective. One may use it for every protocol. This means one can never run out of protocols; just replace “migraine” with “PCOS”, “DM” or “Cancer”.
3. To write an effective and quick(and inefficient) literature review for a protocol use popular search engines, and copy all the reference from the first search result page, without knowing the authenticity or source.
4. Reading books or latest research articles is a big “No-No”.
5. Make administration of an institution ahead of research.
6. Stress upon the “Team Building” and not “Capacity Building”. Gather all your near and dear ones to undertake research.
7. Undertake “too many” researches at one time, and try to complete all of them in one go.
8. Expect other team members to do research work on your behalf.
9. Claim authorship for work not done by you.
10. Give undue coverage to a budding researcher and imbibe seeds of ego.
11. Pamper yourself for years on single or few publications and present the findings of the same for decades and decades.
12. Hide negative results with a fear that you might get a bad name. One should be always be positive results oriented.
13. You are a “Best Researcher” after one or two studies.
14. Keep safe the study results preserved in files for years and then consider them publishing and claiming retrospective research.
15. Use adjectives like “ground breaking”, “extra ordinary”, “out of this world”, “mind blowing” etc. for every research you conclude.
16. Consider statistics as god of research, if you find p value < 0.05 you probably need not to look into more, your research is successful.
17. Clinical usefulness to be learnt later, let me find a good publisher to publish my work.
18. Try to write meta-analysis and systematic review by going through abstracts only.
19. Fix your mind for “one and only” design left in this whole world to do a research, and that is “double blind placebo controlled randomized trial”, rest all designs are “ok ok” or “not worth”.
20. Plan research keeping in mind “foreign trips”, “international recognition”, “name”, “fame”, “monetary gains” etc.

I hope you must have enjoyed reading this.