“My most common advice for junior researchers” by LawrenceC

Written quickly as part of the Inkhaven Fellowship.

At a high level, research feedback I give to more junior research collaborators often can fall into one of three categories:

• Doing quick sanity checks
• Saying precisely what you want to say
• Asking why one more time

In each case, I think the advice can be taken to an extreme I no longer endorse. Accordingly, I’ve tried to spell out the degree to which you should implement the advice, as well as what “taking it too far” might look like.

This piece covers doing quick sanity checks, which is the most common advice I give to junior researchers. I’ll cover the other two pieces of advice in a subsequent piece.

Doing quick sanity checks

Research is hard (almost by definition) and people are often wrong. Every researcher has wasted countless hours or days if not weeks or months chasing fruitless lines of investigation.[1] Oftentimes, this time could’ve been saved with a few basic sanity checks. Does your idea make sense at all? Does your data have obvious sources of bias (e.g. forms of selection bias) or other issues (e.g. using the wrong prompt)? Does your theorem make [...]

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 1st, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dYHFtEnKc4BdJEYY4/my-most-common-advice-for-junior-researchers

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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