Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight

Abstract

Journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(2)

Big Data and supply chain management: a review and bibliometric analysis

“…Therefore, citation analysis can provide insights regarding the popularity of articles over time (Pilkington and Meredith 2009). Despite the criticisms, it is still used for analysing literature and identifying influential authors, journals, or articles within a research area (Mac Roberts andMac Roberts 1989, 2010;Vokurka 1996). …”

The Researcher as Experimental Subject: Using Self-Experimentation to Access Experiences, Understand Social Phenomena, and Stimulate Reflexivity

“…This is evident in the self-reflections shown in the present article, as each researcher commented on how self-experimenting enhanced their internal representations of particular social phenomena that occur outside the experimental setting. Moreover, we suspect on the Social Self-Experimentation 26 basis of the above-described self-reflections that there is a strong relationship between broadening and enhancing one's mental models with regard to social psychological phenomena and the creative process of developing new research questions (for further discussion on self-experimentation as a source of idea generation, see Cabanac, 2004;Lubart & Mouchiroud, 2004;Roberts, 2004). …”

“…Neuringer (1981), for instance, outlines a number of potential advantages for experimental psychologists who practice and report selfexperimentation, namely that it would catalyze experimental process discoveries as well as foster a heightened experimental ethic among communities of researchers. In a series of selfreflections on the benefits of long-term psychological self-experimentation, Roberts (2004, Social Self-Experimentation 11 2012 argues that in addition to allowing the researcher to test new concepts cheaply, positioning oneself as both experimenter and subject generates the types of experiential knowledge from which one may formulate new research ideas distinct from those that arise through synthesizing empirical literature. Much of this advocacy points to the long-standing tradition of self-experimentation in the medical sciences, wherein vital breakthroughs have emerged through self-study (e.g., Nobel Prize recipient Barry Marshall's controlled ingestion of H. pylori bacteria which revealed its culpability in causing gastritis).…”

Where To Start With Ethology Research: A Student-Centered Primer With Examples

“…Indeed, techniques for generating new research ideas are not well studied (e.g., Roberts, 2004). Here, surveys, television and other media, as well as anecdotal observation are presented as three viable starting points to performing successful research.…”