Some half-baked thoughts that you probably have already considered:
Definitely agree that welfare science could be moving much faster than it currently is, and part of that is tied to the research process in universities. But many of the restrictions that make the process slower do have benefits wrt to rigour.
In an ideal world, the research produced by universities is trusted because it passes through a structured process designed to limit bias and enhance rigour. A good study is typically specified in advance: what intervention will occur, how outcomes will be measured, and how they will be analysed. Measurement uses agreed definitions so results are comparable across sites. The protocol is documented and deviations are recorded. Data are retained and can be inspected. Researchers are accountable to supervisors, ethics committees, and institutional reputation, which creates penalties for selective reporting.
After that, peer review functions as an additional filter. Independent reviewers, who (hopefully) have no stake in the result, check whether alternative explanations could account for the findings, whether statistics are appropriate, and whether the conclusions match the data. Weak causal claims can be weeded out at this stage, and appropriate qualifications made.
On farms, how much of this holds? I imagine that the same person might feasibly implement the change, observe the outcome, and possibly even benefit from their interpretation. Management conditions might change simultaneously, unsuccessful trials might be rarely recorded in a standardised way, and there may be no routine adversarial check of the inference by a domain expert. That makes it difficult for third parties to judge whether an alleged welfare improvement genuinely reflects the supposed intervention.
Collecting farm data is feasible, but achieving comparable credibility requires some mechanism(s) for maintaining rigour, including but not limited to: predefined methods, independent verification, and systematic challenge of the conclusions by experts.
My two genuine (not-leading) questions would be:
1) How feasible is this in the farm environment? This means not only implementing the mechanisms to ensure rigour, but also ensuring that key stakeholders trust the process. Even if your research is sound, if key stakeholders won’t trust your results because you did it in a farm and not a lab, then you definitely have to take that into consideration rather than scoff at it.
2) Once you implement those mechanisms for rigour, are you still significantly quicker and more streamlined than university research? (If the answer to this is yes, one would wonder why universities aren’t able to do the same. But obviously there are non-research related factors influencing university research).
I imagine that there’s a trade-off between rigour and resources, where you the more rigour you want, the more resources (including time) you need. So a third bonus question is, how much rigour is enough?
Definitely relate to this. It helps to recognise that the people on this forum are all here by their desire to help, and everyone I’ve interacted with has been a genuinely awesome person. The worst case scenario is some constructive feedback which helps us grow and develop our ideas; people aren’t usually coming from a place of ‘gotcha’ or condescension. If that’s the worst case scenario, sharing your thoughts sounds pretty good!