If you can't find an answer, argue for your question - Moving from a topic to a question to a working hypothesis - Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th edition - Kate L. Turabian 2007

If you can't find an answer, argue for your question
Moving from a topic to a question to a working hypothesis
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

We have focused on questions so much that you might think that your project fails if you can't answer yours. In fact, much important research explains why a question no one has asked should be, even though the researcher can't answer it: Do turtles dream? Why is yawning contagious but being sleepy isn't? Or is it? Such reports focus on why the question is important and what a good answer might look like. Or you may find that someone has answered your question, but incompletely or even, if you're lucky, incorrectly. If you can't find the right answer, you help readers by showing that a widely accepted one is wrong. (See 10.1.2 for how to use this plan in your introduction.)

Only when you ask question after question will you develop the critical imagination you'll need in any profession you follow. In fact, as experienced researchers know, most issues have few, if any, final answers, because there are no final questions. They know that it's as important to ask a new question as it is to answer an old one, and that one day their new question will become old and yield to a newer researcher's still newer one.

Your job is to become that newer researcher.