How to synthesize research without losing the evidence
Keep a trail from every important finding back to the original material. Use AI to organize evidence and expose gaps.
What you will make: A traceable research summary with contradictions and open questions.
Frame the decision
Start with the decision the research should inform. Write what would change your mind and what is outside scope. This prevents a broad summary from being mistaken for useful evidence.
AI can help: Suggest narrower questions and evidence gaps.
Your review: Choose the question and what evidence could change your decision.
Prepare the source set
Create an inventory with source ID, date, type and limitations. Confirm that sharing the material with your chosen service is permitted. Keep interviews, analytics and your own interpretations distinct. Do not assume every source has equal weight.
AI can help: Suggest a consistent structure for source records.
Your review: Check permission, remove unnecessary identifiers and select relevant material.
Extract and group
Ask for a table containing theme, source IDs, supporting evidence, counterexamples and open questions. A source-grounded notebook can help you navigate your documents; it can still make mistakes. Avoid asking for prevalence claims unless your data and method support them.
AI can help: Draft themes with source references and counterexamples.
Your review: Check important claims against the original material.
Challenge the summary
Open the original passage behind each important claim. Check whether quotes retain their meaning and whether contradictory evidence was omitted. Remove claims with no support. Mark ambiguity instead of repairing it with a plausible invention.
AI can help: Flag unsupported claims and missing perspectives.
Your review: Decide which findings are supported and where more research is needed.
Make the decision
Write a decision note that distinguishes findings, interpretations and recommendations. Assign an owner and a review trigger. Keep the source inventory with the final artifact so another person can inspect the reasoning without repeating the entire study.
AI can help: Draft a decision note with options and tradeoffs.
Your review: Own the decision and record what would make you revisit it.
Keep a record of what worked.
Use the pilot scorecard to record quality, total time and failures. These walkthroughs are suggested ways to work; their tool combinations have not been tested end to end.
Get the scorecard ↗Publisher references
Reviewed October 6, 2026. Follow the publisher’s current setup instructions for your account and version.