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Demonstration, Research Each Serve Unique Purpose |
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Media advisory
issued September 5, 2002, effective immediately. Demonstration, Research Each Serve Unique Purpose ARDMORE, Okla. — The Noble Foundation's Agricultural Division seeks to answer questions that will lead to significant changes and improvements in existing agricultural practices ? and then it transfers this information and technology to its clientele, farmers and ranchers in southern Oklahoma and northern Texas. Over the years, the Foundation has conducted many demonstrations and applied research trials on its farms and ranches in southern Oklahoma. Bryan Unruh, research and demonstration manager at the Foundation, said the terms "demonstration" and "research" have been used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. "The two are different in their design and the results they can provide," he said. "The major distinction between research and demonstration relates to whether the objective is to learn something new, as with research, or whether it is to ‘demonstrate' something we've already learned." Demonstrations are designed primarily to show something. Examples of demonstration might be to show what some plant species looks like for identification purposes, or to show a concept, technique, system, or process. "In all of those cases, there is very little regard for gathering new information or comparing results. With a demonstration,
we want to be able to show our clientele something already established or proven so they can learn something new," he said. "Let me hasten to say that a properly designed research project can serve to do both — that is, we can gather new information and show, or demonstrate, various techniques, systems, etc.," Unruh added. At this point you may be asking why a demonstration can't be used to gather new information or answer a particular question. For example, Unruh said, suppose an advertisement claims that a new rye variety, "X," will produce more total forage than the old standard variety "A." Researchers decide to test this claim using a field demonstration. They plant side-by-side plots of equal size, one to variety X and the other to variety A, and measure the total forage produced from each plot. At the end of this exercise they determine that the greater yield was measured from the plot planted to variety X. Shouldn't they conclude that variety X yields more than variety A? "Making this conclusion presumes that the yield difference between the two plots was due only to the forage yield
character of the two rye varieties and nothing else," he says, "The error of this conclusion is that the yield from these two plots will always be affected
by many other factors." "In fact, if we plant the two plots to the same variety and carefully measured forage yield, the yield from the two plots would not be equal. A characteristic of all experimental material is variation, particularly when studying biological systems," Unruh said. It may seem like there is no hope of collecting information to determine if rye variety X yields more than the old standard, he said. "However, we have actually uncovered a key to how we conduct research. The key is this — if we can design an experiment in such a way that we can measure this variability, we can separate it from the answer we seek," Unruh said. "Another key, though it may not be apparent, is that we design the experiment so we get an unbiased estimate of the treatment effects [i.e., a good estimate of forage yield]." ### The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., is a non-profit organization conducting agricultural, forage biotechnological, and plant biology research; providing grants to numerous non-profit charitable, educational and health organizations; and assisting farmers and ranchers through educational and consultative agricultural programs. To learn more, visit the Noble Foundation Web site at http://www.noble.org. More news releases available at www.noble.org/Press_Release |
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