Marvin asked:

What is the relationship between the truth and research?

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I'm going to assume, first, that your question assumes a particular context, that of science. That's the
context in which we usually use the term "research". So the question then becomes whether science
can reveal, or investigate, or perhaps create, truth. Second, I'm going to assume that we understand
that "truth" means something like an accurate correspondence between concepts and reality, as in,
"we have a true picture of the world". The philosopher of science I most admire is Philip Kitcher, and
here's how he puts it, "We explain and predict the differential successes of our fellows in coping with
the world by supposing that there are relations between the elements of their representations and
independent objects." (The Advancement of Science1993, p. 131).

Now, that's just the start, really, of a 400 page book which goes into extravagantdetail on your
question above. That relationship encompasses the nature of theory, of problem-solving methods, of
consensus, of culture, acceptance or questioning of authority, and many more aspects of research.
His conclusion is that we can advance in our knowledge, but not in any simple way. He is attempting
to "naturalize" epistemology, i.e., roughly speaking, to take into account, in our understanding of how
we find out about the world, human cognitive and social structures. That's a horrific oversimplification
of a really excellent book, and I'll mangle it even more by saying that the simple answer to your
question is that we stumble along and do make (all-in-all) progress partly because of fortunate
social/cultural circumstances that enable people interested in truth to evaluate each other's theories
and experimental results reasonably honestly, by and large.

We can take a grossly oversimplified example, like repairing an auto. There's a strange sound, so
what do you do? You open the hood, look around, listen, apply your experience of similar sounds, ask
other mechanics what they think... an older, experienced mechanic has had a lot of bad carburetors
lately, and you listen to that person and form a theory: it's the carburetor. You then go look at the
carburetor, and nothing's wrong. You go and take another look around, listen, ask someone... maybe
it's the valves. You look at the valves, and yes, they're bad. Well, you've done research, haven't you?
And you've finally found "the" answer, a correspondence between your conception of what was wrong
and what actually was wrong: the truth.

And even in this extremely oversimplified example, where there was a definite answer drawn from a
small set of possibilities, you have had to perform a huge variety, not merely a huge amount, of
physical and cognitive and social operations, necessitating a vast knowledge of human relations,
tools, autos, and so forth. You made a mistake, due at least in part to social norms (acceptance of
authority), and corrected it. Should making a mistake, formulating the wrong theory, mean that you
couldn't make progress, do research, arrive at the truth? Obviously not. You followed procedures very
painfully worked out for correcting mistakes (better than slamming the hood down and kicking the car,
right?), and, in this simple and artificial case, they worked. Well, the thesis, defended in the above
book, is that they do in the complex and real-world realms of science, also. Enough of the time, at any
rate, to make progress.

Steven Ravett Brown