research-synthesislisted

# 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