Novelty Robustness Conflict
Start with Pattern The “Explainer”: Here's a pattern, can – and under what conditions does – this mechanism generate it? The “Tinkerer”: Here's a pattern, how robust is it to changes in the underlying mechanism(s)? The “Mediator”: Here are multiple conflicting empirical data patterns, how do we reconcile them? Here are multiple conflicting conceptual ideas, how do we reconcile them? Here is a pattern in data that doesn’t match the existing theory, how do we reconcile this?
Start with Mechanism The “Advocate”: Here is a mechanism that has been overlooked, what are the consequences of including it? Here is a mechanism at one scale, when does it affect patterns at another scale? The “Semantician”: Here is a mechanism, how does its effect on the pattern depend on how the mechanism is captured in a model? The “Instigator”: Here are multiple mechanisms, what is their relative importance for generating a pattern? Here are multiple mechanisms, how might they interact to generate different patterns?
These six roles form the core of our paper and we present them in several different ways below. Our structure is motivated by the fact that different people's brains work in different ways and that we imagine that the same person may find it useful to come back to different sections at different points in their project. In the remaining text of this ‘Framing theory’ section, we explain the six different roles in detail. To illustrate each role, we give examples of specific research questions, drawing on recently published theory in ecology and evolutionary biology from three places: (i) searching for theory papers from the year 2022 in journals from our field (Ecology Letters, Evolution, Journal of Animal Ecology, Oikos, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, The American Naturalist, Theoretical Ecology), (ii) looking at the set of theory papers analysed in Servedio [20], and (iii) previous papers by ourselves (the authors). We expect this section may be most useful for those new to the ideas presented here. In Table 1, we organise the six roles by their starting point (pattern, mechanism) and focus (novelty, robustness, conflict) and provide general ways to frame research questions for each. This section may be useful for researchers who want to brainstorm multiple different theoretical questions for their research project. In Figure 1, we diagram the different relationships between mechanism(s) and pattern(s), which depend on the focus (novelty, robustness, conflict) and on whether there is one or more of each pattern and mechanism. In Figure 2, we provide a decision tree that a researcher can work through by answering a series of questions, which lead to one of the six roles with examples of attitudes one might have in each of these roles. This figure may be most useful for researchers looking to narrow in on one particular way to frame their question.