What's the point of research, anyway??

Knight's chapter this week frustrated me, as I am beginning to feel almost overwhelmed by all the ways one can conduct research and all of the ways these methods can produce inaccurate results. I appreciated the different research methodologies discussed in this chapter, specifically Knight's discussion of images. I, perhaps rather naively, had not considered the many implications and possibilities for research that are contained within an image. Reading this chapter forced me to reconsider previous methods of research, like interviews, that had once seemed so straightforward. Knight mentions that images in research can be problematic because image-research is multi-layered, and must be made sense of by examining the context of the image production and the intended audience (p. 104). When I first read this, I thought that image-based research may be more trouble than it's worth, because it is easy for two people to interpret a single image differently based on their own biases, even given the context of the image's production. Then, I started thinking back to our class lecture and discussion about bias in interviews, and realized that interviews may not be much better! There is no way for a researcher to know if the interviewee's responses are being influenced by anything from the halo effect to even something as small as how the interviewer dressed! This combined with Knight's discussion about the challenges of image research left me slightly disillusioned and cynical about research in general. It is just so hard to prove someone's research is correct when it depends so much on interpretation: both how a subject interprets the study and how the researcher conducts the study.

I obviously realize that research is not just a big guessing game, and that it really is more technical and structured than I am giving it credit for here, but today I feel cynical! With all of these methods one has to wonder about all the inconclusive aspects of research. Maybe I'm just feeling overwhelmed due to the research proposal looming in the distance. Can anyone help me out of my research rut?