Research rarely produces a clean, unambiguous answer. The real work is deciding what the evidence actually supports, where it's inconclusive, and how confident a recommendation can honestly be.
In practice
- Weighing conflicting findings from different sources or datasets
- Distinguishing correlation from causation before a claim goes into a report
- Making a recommendation even when the data is incomplete — and being transparent about that
This is the skill underneath my research philosophy and my article on evidence-based decision-making.