It happened years ago. A man stood before me with a pointing finger and urged me to prove his idea about changing education by researching it. Even though it was difficult, I admit, I remained calm and explained to him that it doesn’t work that way. I could investigate whether his idea could possibly have added value to education, in which circumstances, in which not, and so on. At least, if I had the time, the budget, and the proposal, I would have passed an ethics committee. He reasoned that I wouldn’t be a good researcher if I couldn’t prove it.

However, researchers are not good or bad depending on what they can’t prove or what they come up with. I know all too well what it’s like to work very hard with a whole team of people on a study that builds on previous findings from other researchers in combination with certainly not illogical conclusions based on well-founded theories. I know how it feels to discover that the result is not what you hoped. And that sucks. That hurts. That’s swearing. But that is also science. In recent years, I have also met researchers who struggle with this. For example, one scientist told me I had not used the correct statistical method because my research “didn’t come out”. Well, no. Other scientists would keep searching until her theory was proven. In a way, it is very nice, but you should not start research without accepting that the result can also differ from what you hope or think.

I have the honour of supervising many students with their theses again this year, which is the warning I often give them. You are going to gain knowledge. You may go and explore uncharted territory, just like in Star Trek, but realize that you can also return from a fruitless journey. Then comfort yourself with the thought that in this way, you also help science and the real world move forward.

I am not writing this piece to complain. It is often great work. But it is helpful for the outside world or for people starting research to know what you can and cannot expect from science. This week, I heard someone say that something cannot be evidence-based because it does not always ‘work’. If this were the criterion, then there may not be much evidence-based in education. It is not for nothing that I often say, “Not everything works in education, and almost nothing works all the time.”

I am also writing this piece to encourage scientists who did not find what they hoped to discover or are called nasty names because they arrive at results that they or their clients do not like. If you want to be sure of a result, then science is not the answer, but you can try something like faith or ideology. And even then.

Perhaps you could ask why I like doing research so much myself? Almost as much as the most fun thing I think there is professionally: teaching (and sometimes also being a musician)? Isn’t it a form of self-mortification? Perhaps, but it is perhaps curiosity that needs to be quenched. It builds on what we already know, even if you sometimes have to take a different turn or become that one child who shouts that the emperor or empress has no clothes.

Science can be fun sometimes. Fortunately.