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:
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
““He swore that day till the leaves shook on the trees. Charming! Delightful! Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since. Sir, on that memorable day he swore like an angel from Heaven!””
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)