fit general expectations with regard to scientific procedure and some might
reflect (with no apology but so stated) guite personal choice. Investigators
necessarily have differing interests and capacities and operate within per-
sonal as well as topical limitations.

The point here is that the multiple decisions throughout might be partly
objective and partly subjective, in part taken consciously and in part taken
without full awareness. They might be partly recalled and partly forgotten.
The latter might be especially the case in the earliest stages if someone
else's non-articulated assumptions are unwittingly incorporated into the
choices made. With experience, of Course, one learns to keep ostemažie note
of these things and therefore to reduce the possibility of later feeling
traumatized by any sense of confusion.

The constant need for decisions, the criteria governing decisions, the
processes involved and the likelihood that all three are subject to learning
and correction as projects move along may not always be self-evident. Though
it may seem self-evident once said, it is not always pointed out that the
ground and the ground rules may change as learning progresses,

Further, it may not be self-evident that the decisions, the choice of
governing criteria and the processes involved are not always as seguential as
simple descriptions of scientific method or later published research reports
might suggest. Counsel to state the purpose or problem at the start and to
follow four or five steps does not prepare one for an experience that may
seem more nebulous, ill-structured, mercurial and non-linear than expected.
These considerations alone should make it clear why staking out the initial
point of departure is so important whatever the impatience, the frustration
and the difficulty may seem to be at the time. Salvage later is considerably

more devastating.

zeja