Richard de Neufville's TPP SM Thesis Manual - Title Page - MIT

Ask yourself first of all: What are your criteria for success in establishing yourhypothesis? By what measures will you know that you have answered yourquestions successfully? Then ask yourself what kind of results are in fact likelyto emerge from applying your method to the evidence available? Will theseresults likely be sufficient to make your point? If not, you need to revise eitheryour question or the method, to make them logically compatible. Chapter 8discusses in detail some ideas about how you may construct a good logicalargument and support the point you wish to make in your thesis.Remember that your logic needs to convince others. The logic used musttherefore be adjusted to the audience. For example, if you are trying to make acase for the deregulation of the telephone system, you will need to make adifferent argument to legislators concerned with the impact of changes, than toeconomists who already are convinced of the benefits of free markets. Yourlogic needs to address and surmount the difficulties your audience will have inaccepting your results.Critical ExperimentsResearch formulated around a “critical experiment” is often particularly effective.For the students, a critical experiment is especially desirable since it leads to agood thesis regardless of how the results turn out. This is because the resultswill validate one or another of several theories or models.A critical experiment is one that helps decide between two (or more) competingtheories on a subject. The concept is as follows. In general there are manytheories about or models about how a system behaves. People rarely totallyagree on how to explain any set of phenomena or observations. All significanttheories will account for the major, obvious characteristics of the subject –otherwise they would not be serious contenders. The several competitivemodels will differ however, in that they lead, in some way, to different implicationsabout some particular details. A critical experiment is one that investigates suchdetails to see what happens: depending on the result one (or more) theories arevalidated (or at least appear more likely) and the others are refuted (to someextent).Critical experiments are often particularly interesting because the results can bedecisive for the validity of competitive theories. They thus tend to attract a lot ofattention, which is almost always good for the thesis student or researcher.To formulate a thesis around critical experiments and evidence, it is necessary todevelop a good understanding of the models that are used in an area. This leadsto the appreciation of how they differ and what is required to distinguish betweenThesis Definition and Preparation -- Richard de Neufville 9