How to draft a research hypothesis or research opening report?

My first chatter is about research hypothesis (rationale, justification of a given study, or opening report in Chinese), which is the first step for us to conduct high impact research.

If you have had a right and feasible hypothesis, your research could be more than half way done. It seems very silly to discuss it since we are all "scientists" by training.

It is true that during our training, we as students usually spend months and months of time to search literature and prepare or write a review in the field before performing any real experiments. We all know that the research hypothesis is sole important and directly determines our research impact.

But often time, we do ignore the importance of research rationale before and during experiments, data collection and summary, or manuscript preparation.

For biomedical research, we can propose our research hypothesis in the following ways, which doesn't matter whether you area basic, translational, or clinic researcher:

1) Focus on the risk factor-mediated gene alterations. For example, lung cancer is associated with tobacco smoke; thus, we may hypothesize tobacco carcinogen-caused gene alterations (gene mutations, methylation, and other epigenetic changes);

2) Gene pathway-related gene alterations, e.g., p53 is often mutated in lung cancer; how about the role of the p53 up- or down-stream genes in lung cancer progression;

3) Mechanism of gene or drug action in a particular disease or organ site. For example, a gene is mutated or a drug worked well in a disease, so we will rationalize how and why. This kind of study specifically suits for GWAS data to provide hypothesis for further study of a particular gene in a given disease.

Taking home message is whatever we like to do needs a justification. In other words, we will rationalize why we perform a study and what implication we will expect to be reached in a given study.

But we will not rationalize that

"A gene was abnormally expressed in one cancer but its expression is unknown in another cancer; thus, we performed this study";

or "A gene plays an important role in regulation of apoptosis in a cancer, but it is unknown whether this gene also plays a role in another cancer; thus, we performed the current study";

or "A gene is mutated in a cancer; thus, we assessed this gene mutation in another cancer".

These rationales were wrongly proposed because different diseases or cancers have the own risk factor, etiology, and pathogenesis. We can't just fish something for "novelty".

 Medjaden editor

译文：如何起草实验假设或开题报告

如果您有了正确的方向和可行的假设，您的研究就成功了一半。现在讨论这个似乎比较可笑，因为我们都是已经受过良好训练的“科研人员”。是的，在学生时代，我们在真正开始实验之前，就被训练着花费数月的时间寻找相关参考文献，用以准备一篇本研究领域的综述。

我们都明白，一个好的实验前提，对文稿最终的发表影响力有多么重要，但是在实验、数据收集整理和论文的撰写中，大家仍旧经常忽略研究的立意。

对于生物医学类的研究，不论涉及到基础研究还是临床研究，以下几点意见都可供您在提出实验假设时进行参考：

1）关注风险因子介导的基因突变。例如：吸烟与肺癌有关，我们就可以假设烟草致癌物会导致基因突变（序列的变异，甲基化和其他表观遗传的改变）；

2）关注信号通路上的基因改变。例如：肺癌患者中p53经常有变化，那么肺癌的致病过程中，在p53上游或者下游的基因是如何变化的？

3）关注基因或者药物在特异疾病或组织中的作用机制。例如：我们知道一个基因突变或者一个药物对某种疾病有效，那么我们就需要了解为什么有效和如何生效。而这个理由也特别适合对GWAS分析文章后续的深入研究。

 总之大家要记住：不论写哪方面的文章，都需要有坚实的研究依据。换句话说，我们需要指出我们做这个实验的原因，希望得到什么样的结论。以下是作者叙述实验依据中不合格的例子：

 因为这个基因在某种癌症中表达正常，但是在另一种癌症中还尚无研究，所以我们进行了如下实验。不合格！

 一个基因在某种癌细胞凋亡的调控中起到重要作用，但在其他的癌症中作用尚不知，所以我们进行了这个研究。不合格！

在某种癌症中一个基因突变了，但我们想研究一下在其他癌症中，这个基因是否会突变。不合格！

 由于不同的疾病都有特异的风险因子，病因和发病机制，所以以上理由都是站不住脚的，大家不能用钓鱼策略来寻找文章的“Novelty”。

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