by Richie Mogwai

Created on: October 30, 2010

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” wrote a reporter in a New York Sun editorial in 1867.  His work, despite being more an article of faith rather than a well-researched paper, has nevertheless, endured not to prove the existence of Santa Claus.  To both young and old, it has evolved as a prescription for the need for hope or keeping one’s faith during trying times.

It is easy enough to translate the message for the 21st century:  “Yes, Virginia, perfect research is possible.”

How so, one might ask?  Only if the research paper achieves what the researcher has laid out as an objective.

Indeed, the Internet is a gold mine of information for conducting the perfect research.  Although the quality of information does vary greatly from one web resource to another (Driscoll, et al, “Evaluating Sources:  Overview”), a decent step-by-step approach can still be pieced together after performing a simple Google search.

For example, “How to Write an A+ Research Paper” turns out to be an excellent resource for composing the perfect research.  It is not only exhaustive; it is also comprehensive.  Hence the statement, “there is no hope of doing perfect research” should prove to be a mere cautionary tale for any serious researcher to avoid the pitfalls of losing objectivity. 

With this perspective in mind, no piece of research is truly perfect, unless it fulfills its objective.  As one popular saying goes, the end justifies the means.  For example, my undergraduate thesis entitled “A Feasibility Study on the Establishment of a Secondary Theater Organization in the Campus” nearly missed its submission deadline.  However, because the dean of the college accepted the work, enabling me to graduate, it does qualify as a perfect research.

Similarly, a Physics 101 term paper “Let Us Make Creationism Obsolete” proved to be my ticket to passing the subject in 1984.  However William Strunk Jr. of The Elements of Style fame might object after a thorough grammatical review, my term paper achieved its objective, end of the story.

Strunk did say that vigorous writing should be so precise as to have no unnecessary words “for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts” (39).

Accordingly, I tried my best at conciseness, condensing my Physics term paper into the “four

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