Recently I came across an article that caught my attention. Unlike what I usually write for this blog, this article is not about cognitive neuroscience, but refers to a topic that affects more general science. The article in question is entitled "The Importance of stupidity in scientific research ", written by Martin Schwarz, a researcher in the field of micribiología and published in the Journal of Cell Science as a test in 2008.
How is that a researcher decides to write about the importance of stupidity in scientific research?, Schwarz writes that one day he met a fellow graduate, in his view, was very clever. However, this fellow threw the graduates in science and went to study to become a lawyer, currently having an excellent position in this profession. Schwarz asked him directly because he had left graduate school, what your ex-partner replied simply that after a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do anything else. Clearly that is not your friend was stupid, just that the graduate made her feel stupid.
But why?. Schwarz thinks that after thinking a while, concluded that in some way, so one must be feeling when trying to actually research frontier. The point is that both the traditional school and during college can perform well just by studying methodically information required in each class. However, research in graduate school, one can consider fully all the material in each class, however, provides no guarantee that you will end up being a good researcher. That is, a pure student may be completely inept downs as a researcher. Schwarz says that while a student can learn a whole book, that's not enough to generate hypotheses that result in new knowledge. And I want to emphasize the appearance of new knowledge. It does not refer to modify one or another variable to see what happens, relates to raise a hypothesis that generates knowledge that human beings never ever in its history has had such knowledge is not currently in any book or article that the student can study to get ten.
is where I fully understand Schwarz referred to when he talks about the importance of stupidity in science. It's when you feel a noticeable awkwardness in understanding the phenomenon that you want to explain and, as a medieval torture haunts you every time you fail to disentangle. The difference between a student of ten and a true scientist is in a moment. The moment in which the skein is disrupted and out of nowhere comes the answer that had so wanted, that between the student scientist.
"The mere Formulation of a problem is far more essential Often Than ITS solution, Which May Be Merely a matter of Mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new Possibilities, Problems to Regard old from a new angle Requires creative imagination and marks real Advances in science. "
Albert Einstein
The other stupid as Einstein.
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