In James Elroy Flecker's poem "The Gates of Damascus", the poet imagines four exits from the safe comfortable city to the outside world. Each gate takes the traveller into a different set of temptations and dangers. The Aleppo Gate leads to trade and commerce, the Mecca Gate is for faith and pilgrimage, the Lebanon Gate is for exploration and the search for enlightenment, and the Baghdad Gate leads to danger and even death. When we educational researchers leave our safe city, our ivory tower, our Damascus, we can choose which gate we take: that is our destination, our goal, our methods. The paper will explore the choices that face educational researchers, and the consequences of those choices. Issues of funding, faith, exploration and danger will be discussed with examples from controversies about educational research.