...is research.

Lately I've been very distressed to see one of my favourite words getting widely misused. And not just among the few, the insane, the historical clothing enthusiasts. This disease has spread to the general population. Just yesterday I saw a commercial for the US Army wherein a young lad announced to his parents, "I did all my research and I can get training in..."

No! You did not "do research". You went to the recruiting center and talked to a recruitment officer. Or you read a website. Or a brochure. You did NOT "do research". The simple act of reading does not count as "research".

Research requires a number of things. The first step is a literature search. In our type of research, one might do a pictorial survey as well. This is the first stage in which the researcher gathers as much information about the subject as he can. The point of this first step is to read or look at every possible example of the subject. Articles, pictures, surviving examples should be found. All this information must be intensely scrutinized by the researcher before the next step occurs.

The second step is the formulation of a hypothesis. This is when the researcher takes the information she learned in the first step and comes up with a statement she believes is true from the evidence she's seen thusfar. For example: "sniffletywidges are constructed with pleats."

The third step is the test of the hypothesis. In clothing research, this step usually comes from making a reconstruction and seeing if what we think is true actually works in practice.

The fourth step is the formulation of a theory. Contrary to popular belief, a theory is not a guess. A theory is a hypothesis that has been tested and found to be true. The theory will stand until another hypothesis is tested to prove it false.

In clothing research, there are many things we cannot say for certain. For example, we may know that sniffletywidges were typically pleated, but it's impossible for us to know why. We may guess that pleating had some religious significance to the sniffletywidge-making people. We may presume that pleating was thought more aesthetically pleasing than gathers. But unless we have found written accounts of why sniffletywidges were pleated, we cannot know why. And even if we have written accounts, we cannot know if that was everyone's reason for pleating their sniffletywidges.

This shift in definition came to my attention a little while ago when talking to an acquaintance about another researcher's work. I was speaking admiringly about her work and how like the period pictures her sniffletywidges looked. My acquaintance bristled and said, "She stole my research."

I was shocked. I never knew my acquaintance to wear a sniffletywidge. So I said, "You're into sniffletywidges? I never knew!"

"Well, not really," she said. "But I lent her all the books she used."

Um...

Okay. Look. Lending someone books is lending someone books. If someone writes an article and doesn't thank you for lending them books, that's nothing more than a social faux pas. She didn't steal from you!

And how do you know you didn't lend her books that contained information she already had? I know that I was once accused of "stealing" when I already had the illustrations someone gave me from another source.

(And how you can steal something you were given continues to baffle me...)

Those of you who know me really well know that I'm really sensitive about accusations of stealing other people's research. I mean, it's happened to me so very publically that I can't be blamed for bristling when the subject comes up.

Now I think I understand how someone could have accused me of "stealing" if she was using the same criteria as this acquaintance of mine.

So there you have it. Talk among yourselves.