3 ms·

The importance of stupidity in scientific research (2008) [pdf]

38 points by 11thEarlOfMar 4y ago

watersb 4y ago
""" The conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else. Science makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. I even think it’s supposed to be this way: For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it... [and yet] an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that [one of my professors] knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn’t have the answer, nobody did. That’s when it hit me: nobody did. That’s why it was a research problem. """ Exactly my relationship with computers and all things cybernetic: riding on the jagged edge of my stupidity. I will never figure it all out.
- posterboy 4y ago
  > Second, we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying. Great. Wrong use of"stupid", IMHO, because it's an oxymoron like feel numb and, while one may be ignorant of something, eg. of the memory architecture and the losses of firefox that frequently leads into crashes, you can't really be stupid of (or about) something, if to stupify rather implies loss (of brain cells). And why was this published in cell research?
  - stonogo 4y ago
    > And why was this published in cell research? Because a quality academic journal is more than DOI-minting paper mill. Cell Research in particular regular has commentary and essays about the state of microbiology research, advice for scientists at various career stages, biographical sketches or interviews with various scientists, and even humor (search "sticky wicket" in the Cell archives for examples of that last).
thedailymail 4y ago
Not to mention the importance of stupendipity – the lucky discoveries you make thanks to your woeful ignorance of common knowledge in the field, or just sheer bone-headedness.
- idrathernot 4y ago
  People generally under appreciate just how many groundbreaking scientific discoveries have been made at least partially by accident or aimless tinkering. It leads me to believe that STEM fields shouldn’t be so selective in weeding out below average students. So if you increase the population of researchers/tinkerers, the probability of one of them stumbling across something incredibly useful rises. Obviously it depends on the field though and the cost of individual failures needs to be minimized.
brutusborn 4y ago
Thanks for posting, this helped ease some of my anxieties about starting a PhD. Sometimes I worry that I will get stuck and will end up with nothing to show, and I try to remind myself that I am going into uncharted territory and getting stuck is to be expected. The only way that I will definitely end up with nothing to show is if I let my worries take over and quit.

38 points by 11thEarlOfMar 4y ago

""" The conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else. Science makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. I even think it’s supposed to be this way: For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it... [and yet] an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that [one of my professors] knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn’t have the answer, nobody did. That’s when it hit me: nobody did. That’s why it was a research problem. """ Exactly my relationship with computers and all things cybernetic: riding on the jagged edge of my stupidity. I will never figure it all out.

posterboy 4y ago
> Second, we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying. Great. Wrong use of"stupid", IMHO, because it's an oxymoron like feel numb and, while one may be ignorant of something, eg. of the memory architecture and the losses of firefox that frequently leads into crashes, you can't really be stupid of (or about) something, if to stupify rather implies loss (of brain cells). And why was this published in cell research?
- stonogo 4y ago
  > And why was this published in cell research? Because a quality academic journal is more than DOI-minting paper mill. Cell Research in particular regular has commentary and essays about the state of microbiology research, advice for scientists at various career stages, biographical sketches or interviews with various scientists, and even humor (search "sticky wicket" in the Cell archives for examples of that last).

thedailymail 4y ago

Not to mention the importance of stupendipity – the lucky discoveries you make thanks to your woeful ignorance of common knowledge in the field, or just sheer bone-headedness.

idrathernot 4y ago
People generally under appreciate just how many groundbreaking scientific discoveries have been made at least partially by accident or aimless tinkering. It leads me to believe that STEM fields shouldn’t be so selective in weeding out below average students. So if you increase the population of researchers/tinkerers, the probability of one of them stumbling across something incredibly useful rises. Obviously it depends on the field though and the cost of individual failures needs to be minimized.

brutusborn 4y ago

Thanks for posting, this helped ease some of my anxieties about starting a PhD. Sometimes I worry that I will get stuck and will end up with nothing to show, and I try to remind myself that I am going into uncharted territory and getting stuck is to be expected. The only way that I will definitely end up with nothing to show is if I let my worries take over and quit.