A research program (UK: research programme) is a professional network of scientists conducting basic research. The term was used by philosopher of science Imre Lakatos to blend and revise the normative model of science offered by Karl Popper's falsificationism and the descriptive model of science offered by Thomas Kuhn's normal science. Lakatos found falsificationism impractical and often not practiced, and found normal science—where a paradigm of science, mimicking an exemplar, extinguishes differing perspectives—more monopolistic than actual.
Lakatos found multiple research programmes to coexist, each having a hard core of theories immune to revision, surrounded by a protective belt of malleable theories. A research programme vies against others to be most progressive. Extending the research programme's theories into new domains is theoretical progress, and experimentally corroborating such is empirical progress, always refusing falsification of the research programme's hard core. A research programme might degenerate—lose progressiveness—but later return to progressiveness.
Famous quotes containing the words research and/or program:
“After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth.”
—Helene Deutsch (1884–1982)
“Chippenhook was the home of Judge Theophilus Harrington, known for his trenchant reply to an irate slave-owner in a runaway slave case. Judge Harrington declared that the owner’s claim to the slave was defective. The owner indignantly demanded to know what was lacking in his legally sound claim. The Judge exploded, ‘A bill of sale, sir, from God Almighty!’”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)