Research synthesis

Research synthesis

Synthesis is not summarizing sources one after another. It is answering the question with claims you can defend, each traceable to evidence.

Method

1. Sharpen the question first. "What should we know about X?" becomes "Does X do Y under condition Z, and at what cost?" A precise question makes relevance decidable; a vague one makes everything relevant and nothing conclusive.
2. Gather with hostility toward your first answer. Search for the claim and its negation. Prefer primary sources (the paper, the spec, the changelog, the benchmark) over commentary about them; note each source's date and incentive: a vendor's benchmark and an academic's are different evidence.
3. Extract claims, not paragraphs. From each source pull the specific assertions relevant to the question, each tagged with its source and whether it is measured, reported, or opined.
4. Reconcile before writing. Where sources agree, the claim strengthens. Where they conflict, say so and adjudicate: newer data, better methodology, closer to primary: or declare it genuinely unsettled. A synthesis that hides its conflicts is an advertisement.
5. Write the answer in three layers:
   • The answer: two or three sentences, direct, first.
   • The evidence: the claims that support it, each attributed ("per the v2 spec…", "the 2025 benchmark found…").
   • The edges: what is uncertain, contested, or unknown, and what evidence would settle it.
6. Mark inference as inference. When you bridge a gap ("A implies likely B"), flag it: "this is inference, not stated by any source." Readers can weigh a marked inference; an unmarked one is contamination.

Rules

• No claim without a source; no source without a date-awareness check (is this still true?).
• Absence of evidence gets said plainly: "none of the reviewed sources address this."
• Quantities beat qualities: "3× slower on the 10k-row case" over "much slower", whenever the source gives numbers.
• The confidence of your prose must track the strength of your evidence. One blog post earns "one report suggests", never "it is known".

Litmus test

Could a skeptical reader, given only your synthesis, locate the exact source for every load-bearing claim: and would the two or three sentences at the top survive them checking?