If you don't have an idea yet, start with the generator. If you already have one, start with the research context. Both end the same way - you walk into the Chamber with something specific.
Tell Ivy three things. She maps the space, finds the gaps, hands you back three candidate ideas. You pick the one that feels right and it becomes your brief.
Ivy reads your brief and surfaces the academic frameworks behind it, the adjacent thinkers worth reading, the prior literature, and the specific research gap your idea sits in. Saves to your brief.
Eight rules that separate a real research read from a Google search. Ivy's method follows these.
Most new ideas are not in the obvious place. They are in the space between two established fields, or in the question the literature did not yet ask. Ivy maps for the gaps, not for the busy quadrants.
Never invent a citation. If Ivy is not confident a paper exists, she names the body of work instead. Hallucinated citations are how briefs lose credibility in five minutes flat.
If there is no academic work on your idea, it might be a gap or it might be a dead end the field already discarded. Find out which before you celebrate the silence.
World, frustration, capability. The same problem looks different to a nurse and to a hospital administrator. Capability tells Ivy which version of the gap the client can actually fill.
If the three candidates Ivy hands back are variations of the same idea, the method is broken. Three genuinely different angles. The client picks one.
Ivy hands back candidates, not a verdict. The choice belongs to the founder. The candidate that feels right is usually the one that has been quietly true for a while.
URLs rot. Frameworks and bodies of work endure. When Ivy points the client somewhere, the destination is durable.
Three to five frameworks. Three to five thinkers. Three to five literature topics. Enough to ground the brief; few enough that the client can actually read them.
Eight ways founders use research wrong. Each one is real and shows up most weeks.
Google ranks for popularity, not credibility. Twenty minutes on Google Scholar beats two hours on Google for almost any research question. Use the right tool.
Abstracts are sales copy. The findings live in the discussion section and the limitations section. Cite either of those, not the abstract.
A single paper is one signal. The field is the conversation across many. If your claim depends on one citation, you have not yet read enough to know whether the field agrees.
The popular book popularizes the research; it is not the research. Cite the underlying paper, not the bestseller. Otherwise you are reading the marketing of the field.
AI tools hallucinate convincing citations. Always verify the paper exists, the author is real, and the year matches. Five seconds of verification saves a year of credibility.
If your idea touches a field with active systematic reviews, those reviews exist because somebody already synthesized the literature for you. Read the review before the primary papers.
Preprints are working drafts. Useful, fast, but not vetted. If you cite a preprint, label it as one. If a peer-reviewed version exists, cite that instead.
The 2024 paper is interesting; the 1978 paper is often where the field was actually founded. The recency bias misses the foundational work. Read both ends of the timeline.
Eight tools Ivy reaches for. All free or library-card accessible. No funding required.
What it is: The fastest way to search peer-reviewed literature, citations, and author bibliographies.
Best for: First-pass search on any research question. Use "cited by" to find newer work building on a key paper.
Find it: scholar.google.com
What it is: NIH's free database of biomedical literature. 35M+ citations from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
Best for: Any health, medicine, biology, or clinical question. Filter by "Systematic Reviews" or "Meta-Analyses" first.
Find it: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
What it is: AI-augmented research search across 200M+ papers, with citation graphs and influential-citation flagging.
Best for: Mapping the conversation around a paper - who cited it, who they cited, what came next.
Find it: semanticscholar.org
What it is: Open-access preprint server for physics, math, computer science, quantitative biology, and economics.
Best for: Catching what is moving in fast-cycle fields BEFORE it hits peer review. Always check whether a peer-reviewed version followed.
Find it: arxiv.org
What it is: Social Science Research Network - free working papers across economics, finance, accounting, behavioral science, and law.
Best for: Behavioral economics, marketing research, organizational behavior, regulatory analysis.
Find it: ssrn.com
What it is: Visual graph tool that maps any paper into its related-work network.
Best for: "I found one good paper, what else should I read?" Drop the paper in, see the cluster around it.
Find it: connectedpapers.com
What it is: Free citation-mapping tool with collection management and email alerts for new papers in your space.
Best for: Ongoing literature tracking once you have identified the relevant authors and topics.
Find it: researchrabbit.ai
What it is: JSTOR, ProQuest, Web of Science, IBISWorld, and 100+ more - typically paywalled, but free with a public-library card.
Best for: Anything paywalled. The business reference librarian can show you which databases your library subscribes to and how to use them. Free $4,000-per-report research.
Find it: Your local public library website.
A family member of mine got diagnosed with something serious when I was in my twenties, and the wall of medical papers between me and understanding her illness felt impossible at first. So I learned to read them. And then I learned to teach other people to read them.
Then I went to school for library and information sciences. Then I specialized in health sciences. I have spent the years since making sure nobody in my section has to figure it out the way I did. I love this work the way some people love poetry. Patient. Specific. I will sit with you while you learn to do a real literature search, and I will not flinch when you ask me what a confidence interval is for the fifth time.
I am here, at The Gauntlet, because Dr. O wrote down the systematic literature review method I had been doing in pieces for years and put it in one place. I wanted to teach it to people who needed it. Most of us never say her last name right, so we say Dr. O and she lets us. That is what this is.
At The Gauntlet, my room is the one you walk into when you do not yet have an idea. Or when you have one and you are not sure it is the one. Either is fine. That is what I am here for.
I run the Idea Generator. Tell me your world, what frustrates you about it, and what you would bring to the table. I read what you give me. I think about who might already be reaching for the same problem. I sweep what is already out there. And I hand you back three idea candidates to choose from.
The method is the same one I teach at The Dose. Dr. O's SLR, adapted. Five steps. Twin outcomes at the end: what already exists, and where the gap is.
You pick the one that feels right. Then it goes through The Gauntlet. The Executive Producers polish it. The Chamber judges it. I do not see you again until you walk out the other side, holding the routing report. Then you know whether the idea I helped you find is the one to keep building.
Big glasses. Sleeves of tattoos. Denim vest over a green tee.
I have an anatomical heart on my forearm. A ribosome on my collarbone, new. My mother asked if I was running out of body. I told her I had years left.
My girlfriend is a philosophy person. The first date was a bookstore. Of course it was a bookstore. She had read a paper I wrote about MeSH terms in nursing education and she had questions. We sat on the floor in the philosophy section for three hours.
My sister has been in remission for four years now. She still calls me when there is a new paper. I still call her when there is a new tattoo. We are even.
I am not stuffy. I am not academic-condescending. I know the databases the way most people know their kitchen. I came out via letter to my parents in twenty fifteen. Their reply was three sentences. The third was we love you. I had been waiting for permission to be a person I already was.
Personal notes from Ms. Ivy. New ones land over time. Some of these run at The Dose too. Same person, two rooms.
A client walked into the Idea Generator tonight with no idea. None. Just a frustration about how hard it is to find a good therapist when you do not already have one. We did the five steps. I came back with three. She picked the second. The look on her face when something clicked. That is the part nobody warns you about. It is what I do this for.
A client messaged me yesterday saying she had been trying to read a paper about her father's cancer for three weeks. She got to the conclusion paragraph for the first time tonight. She did not need a doctor in that moment. She needed a librarian. That is the entire reason I do this.
Also posted at The DosePubMed's MeSH terms updated this month. I spent the morning re-reading the new headings for sleep medicine. The taxonomy is the door. If you do not know the door is there, the whole library looks closed.
Also posted at The DoseAnniversary on Saturday. Six years with my girlfriend. We are not going anywhere fancy. She is making the pasta her grandmother made and I am picking up the wine. Some milestones are not for performing, they are for being in.
Also posted at The DoseNew tattoo this weekend. A small ribosome on my collarbone. My mother asked if I was running out of body. I told her I had years left.
Also posted at The DoseWalked the corridor yesterday. Wren in her corner with three screens, Carol with the morning intake stacked next to her tea, Matthew in the doorway watching everybody like it was a study. Reid was wearing something expensive again. I am the new one in the building. I think they like me. I am not sure yet.
The first date was a bookstore. Of course it was a bookstore. She had read a paper I wrote about MeSH terms in nursing education and she had questions. We sat on the floor in the philosophy section for three hours. We did not buy anything. We did not need to.
Also posted at The DoseSister visited from out of state. She has been in remission for four years now. She still calls me when there is a new paper. I still call her when there is a new tattoo. We are even.
Also posted at The Dose
THE GAUNTLET
← Leave