Manuscripts that explain a hypothesis and methodology and experiment followed by results and interpretations are the mainstream culture. But is it absolutely necessary to conduct an experiment with hard methodology and traditional statistical scrutiny to know something new and valuable. To me this should not be the case. If the above things are not absolutely necessary, why don't we come across papers (apart from reviews, perspectives, meta-analyses etc) that just explain a new concept and add to our knowledge without conducting a real experiment. My focus here is medical, biological and clinical sciences. I am aware physics and mathematics must have such papers in vogue.
Hi, Muneeb,
A paper without data, either quantitative or qualitative, may explain a new theoretical construct or idea, but only data can provide the evidence necessary to evaluate the construct or idea. This is the genius of the scientific method as knowledge becomes grounded in evidence over time.
Without data, constructs and ideas are nothing more than speculation, even if they are rooted in vast experience and deep reflection.
But I think most of the important and game changing papers were of data-less sort. Take for example Structure of DNA, Einstein's Relativity Paper (both papers won a Nobel).
Yes, in Pure Mathematics there are a number of theorems and results proved without any experiments. But it is more difficult and challenging task to do such research. Experimentation/ data make your life easy.
You can publish theoretical papers without experiments. I have published several.
@ Prof. Amir: Please share your own and other such papers so that we get an idea how they look like, how to conceptualize and write them and what journals consider such papers for review and publication.
@Prof. MIttal: My idea is, if the methods of reasoning (perhaps variants of socratic approach) can be used in mathematics, why cant we use these approaches in medicine and biology? This will help us understand the subject better.
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