[Nomadofthehills]

I considered posting this in the science forum, but felt it wasn't actually about science, so here it is:

The importance of stupidity in scientific research Martin A. Schwartz Department of Microbiology, UVA Health System, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA e-mail: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Accepted 9 April 2008 I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, 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. I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way. Let me explain. 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. That can't be the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart. A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly frame the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube 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. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can. I'd like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It's a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty. 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. I'm not talking about `relative stupidity', in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don't. I'm also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don't match their talents. Science involves confronting our `absolute stupidity'. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don't know'. The point of the exam isn't to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it's the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student's weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student's knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project. Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

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[Rudy]

A very insightful piece; thank you. I'm starting grad school in economics in the fall and, though economics is not "science" in many ways, a lot of those same points apply. I'll bear it in mind.

[WyohKnott]

That's very interesting; I like it. Although I've never done any significant research on my own, I recently had the experience of working as part of a research group, so I can definitely relate to what the author is talking about. It was more than a little daunting at first, since I've always been quite good in that particular area, and suddenly, not only did I not understand everything, even the leaders weren't sure what our discoveries meant. Anyway, thanks for posting that
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[blueback]

That's a very good article!

It talks about basic research specifically, but I think it is applicable to everything we do in our daily lives as well.

Just like a scientist on the fontier of a speciality, we are all on the frontier of our lives every second. We don't know exactly where to go, or even how to find out where to go. The best we can do is the best we can do, and once you realize that it's like the weight of the world lifts off your shoulders.

[Storm]

That was a nicely written piece. Children would benefit from doing more research at an early. Arrogance, I think is the result of people thinking we know everything.

[Monte314]

Grad school will make you humble, that's for sure. Unfortunately, sometimes it ruins people.

One of the things that makes research scary is that you might be groping your way down a dead end; that risk is also one of the things that makes it exciting.

This is one of the reasons I keep several things going at once... if one goes stale, I just put it on the shelf. Sort of like an "intellectual hedge fund"!

[acyckowski]

The article leads me to wonder, then, about those of us who pursue careers and/or higher education in the sciences (in which I include engineering, math, economics). Since it seems we're exploring the unknown, with no certainty of finding an answer, which is more personally important? Finding the answer or the act of seeking?

Follow-on question...if you personally value the pursuit of the answer, then how satisfied are you with a "messy" solution?

I would surmise from the article that the scientist-turned-lawyer primarily valued having the "correct" answer.

[Storm]

^Except that law doesn't really have correct answers either.

[Monte314]

	Originally Posted by Storm To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	^Except that law doesn't really have correct answers either.

True, but it does have "closure". This is one thing science, as the pursuit and refinement of knowledge about the physical world, will never provide.

This, then, is the psychological challenge that all practitioners have to face: you will spend your entire intellectual life developing theories that someone else will eventually replace...

(...unless you are a mathematician, of course.)

[blueback]

	Originally Posted by Monte314 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	This, then, is the psychological challenge that all practitioners have to face: you will spend your entire intellectual life developing theories that someone else will eventually replace...

I guess they console themselves by being the guy replacing the theories that came before them.

[Monte314]

	Originally Posted by blueback To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I guess they console themselves by being the guy replacing the theories that came before them.

Newton said that he was able to see a little farther than others by standing on the shoulders of giants...

... but the reason he was SMILING is that he was wearing CLEATS.

[Nomadofthehills]

Back in elementary school, I was easily one of the "smartest" in my class, if not the top.

5th grade, we had the option to skip to 6th grade math. I did so, and less people we "dumber" than I was.

6th grade introduced "honors" science, math, language arts, and social studies. I was now among even more less dumb people.

High school brought APs. My intellectual lead diminished further.

Now I am in a science and technology based university. I am an upperclassman, taking senior level classes. I am befriending graduate students; I feel relatively dumber all the time.

I'm still coming to grips with the fact that this is not a bad thing, just another challenge to overcome. While it takes me out of my comfort zone, I am trying to cope with this unnerving feeling. This article helps me embrace this unusual feeling of lack of mental superiority.

[Bacteria]

After starting university, I feel more stupid every day, but at the same time, it's a fascinating field. I'm looking forward to starting a research project in my later years yet also unsure if it's the best thing for me to do. I quite like this piece and hope it will inspire me in my later years when I'm certain that failure is imminent.

[Indy]

I believe the cliche goes like: the more you know, the more you realise how much there is that you don't know.

I remember studying a lot of complicated risk-management models and I was always amazed how people could be knowledgable enough to effectively manage the usually highly diversified portfolios these people were holding. I mean, how can you know the intricasies of the Brazilian rubber market in such detail, while understanding the exchange rate dangers of Korea, while knowing the potential of Russian gas deposits, while ... and have an excellent understanding in all those aspects to incorporate them appropriately in those models.

As it turns, the subprime-mortgage crisis turns out that they actually have barerely any idea of how things work. Evertime I hear these so-called experts praise stocks, I wonder 'how can you know that, you don't know half of what's really going on, nobody knows all the values, don't claim to be so smart, you don't know what you're doing'. Apparently Jon Stewart has been clamoring for this as well these days.

Don't listen to those people, just invest in bonds and some index-funds, that's all I can ever say.

[Polymath]

I love this thread, it's just what I needed. I'm also at that point in college where so many people have been weeded out of my classes (though it's probably only the beginning) that I really don't feel that smart anymore. Luckily, I'm starting to see it as a good thing for a few reasons.

[Pandemonium]

Ohh! I know! Like leaving your petri dish opening over the weekend. XD

[acyckowski]

My experiences over the past week or so at work have just gone to show that the more advanced you get, the smarter your wild-ass guesses sound to others.