Gustafsson, Hagstrom 2018 - What is the point

executive summary and critique :)
worth reading if: you have never heard about "research puzzles" (otherwise stick to this summary)
 * article describes and critiques three ways of finding a research topic, and then proposes constructing a "research puzzle" as a better approach
 * but this argument is a strawman: no sane researcher argues that you only need to find a real-world problem or only need to find a gap in the literature or only need to find a respected method (with the topic being irrelevant). so critiquing these 3 approaches is useless.
 * instead, the standard advice / conventional wisdom (which the authors do not acknowledge) is that you need all three things: good research is about real-world problems which existing literature cannot fully explain, and it uses an appropriate method
 * by not acknowledging this standard advice, they can present the same advice as their innovative method of "finding a research puzzle"
 * similarly strawman-like: no one argues that you should uncritically accept the findings of existing research or commonly used concepts. they call not doing so "problematizing" and again tout it as innovative.
 * one (unproven) interesting claim is that constructing a research puzzle makes your research easier to communicate (= more popular)
 * TLDR shortcut: at the end of the article there is a model dialogue of a 'supervisor' talking a 'student' through the process of constructing a research puzzle
 * TLDR shortcut: at the end of the article there is a model dialogue of a 'supervisor' talking a 'student' through the process of constructing a research puzzle

1. on research gaps
if just looking for a gap, you might end up accepting errors in previous literature

2. on real-world problems
solving problems deemed important for (and by) society makes researchers think in the current political box (-> "status quo-oriented approaches")

3. on selecting by method
definite strawman argument: "the methods literature implies that rigorous research design and sophisticated methods themselves justify new research" (p. 17)

4. "research puzzle"
find sth which is unexpected by previous claims/findings: "Why X despite of Y?"

but: such puzzle construction leads to explaining exceptions rather than general patterns (p. 17). The authors hazily respond that such exceptions can lead to scientific progress in the form of new general claims (p. 18)

other ingredients of good research puzzling... :
 * problematization: disrupt taken-for-granted truths
 * reflect critical on previous and own research, including concepts
 * continually refine research question (informed by empirical findings) (Pierce's "abduction" process)