The importance of stupidity in scientific research

http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full

by rywang • 15 years ago

42 13 15 years ago

jcs.biologists.org

nickolai• 15 years ago

In my limited experience with academia, I would argue this article is more about recognizing one's ignorance in front of a problem, which is indeed one of the most important attributes of a good scientist : "i dont know how to solve this problem, yet".

This is in fact quite the opposite of a stupid position - which would handle the issue of being faced with a challenging problem with either militant ignorance "i don't know and I don't care" or uninformed arrogance "This? of course I know : <insert wrong answer here>"

rflrob• 15 years ago

Very true, but for the first 15 or so years of schooling, knowing the answer to a question is a sign that you aren't stupid, and so the inverse must be true: not knowing is a sign you are stupid. It takes a while to get out of this habit.

calibraxis• 15 years ago

Yes, that's a huge problem with education — if it's geared towards scoring well on tests, and collaboration and research is often "cheating", then it promotes facile understanding.

For a job, tests are fine; you want to know if someone has a basic foundation of ability before they cut into you. But that's different from actual education, the kind that people go through for the first decades of their lives. That should be about something deeper than reliably scoring 90% on mindnumbing series of tests. Like critical thinking and self-directed learning.

arethuza• 15 years ago

The Prof that I worked for when was in academia, who was really quite bright - his PhD was in non-linear control systems, had a wonderfully endearing habit of being quite open when he didn't understand something - he did this in way that made it obvious he was asking because he was generally genuinely interested in what people were telling him and wanted to make a decent effort to understand it.

I seem to remember that he was particularly delighted when, although he had no programming experience, someone explained how Unix fork() works!

Djehngo• 15 years ago

I think I understand the author's point and repeated use of the term "stupidity" keeps the article on a theme and sounds somewhat nove.

However, I think his point would be a lot clearer if he would stop using "stupidity" when he means "ignorance".

lutorm• 15 years ago

I think his point is that most smart people throughout schooling have not encountered true ignorance, so it feels like stupidity.

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

note that the author is male; the person who dropped out is female. for some reason, women, on average, seem to take "being stupid" to heart, while men can ignore it. i have no idea why this happens, but i've seen it again and again.

[no criticism of either sex intended. i simply read the article, then thought "i wonder if the author was male and the other person female?", went back, checked...]

c0riander• 15 years ago

Anecdotally speaking, that reminds me of a woman's comment about why she found raising a VC round so exhausting and difficult -- it was much harder for her to shake off the criticism and doubt constantly lobbed at her by potential investors, whereas male CEOs did not seem to take it to heart the way she did.

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

i've been trying to think of possible biases in this. one that i've come up with is that (i am probably going to explain clumsily here, but i hope you get the idea) women tend to share problems and express feelings more. so perhaps it's just that i hear women discuss this problem more.

maybe men feel as bad, but don't say.

iqster• 15 years ago

When you operate in uncharted waters, independent thinking makes for a good compass. As someone who studied comp sci in undergrad, I felt I didn't develop these skills as much as folks in the humanities.

pradocchia• 15 years ago

I don't know if it's independent thinking so much as synthetic thinking. In comp sci, you get a lot of mileage out of analytic thinking. It maps nicely to linear processes in a computer, and to the rigor of programming languages.

So much mileage, in fact, that your non-analytic faculties atrophy from disuse.

atakan_gurkan• 15 years ago

I would like to counter the opinions that claim that the author should use the term "ignorance" rather than "stupidity". IMHO, the inadequacy that one feels during research does not arise from not knowing the answer, it is a result of not being able to figure out how to approach the problem and reaching an answer. More than this, most of the time you do not know what the appropriate question is.

This is not ignorance, sometimes you simply cannot weave the threads of knowledge you have to reach a pattern. Of course if you have more threads, your job becomes easier; and at some low level of knowledge you will have nothing interesting to ask, but this is not the major difficulty in completing a Ph.D. thesis, at least in my experience (which is in physics/astronomy).

This is what the author is talking about, it is not "knowledge" that is lacking, at least not knowledge in the sense that something you can learn from a book. It is the quality that is mentioned in an essay by pg: http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html

I would not call this problem ignorance. Even though stupidity is kinda harsh, it captures the feeling well.

andrewcooke3• 15 years ago

the idea that stupidity is harsh, and that we have to rename this feeling as ignorance is all part of the problem. everyone is so hung up on not being stupid. even after reading the article, it's what people care about...

you can argue all you like that the author should use another word. but what you have to get over when you're doing research is exactly that feeling. the feeling that people are trying to hide from by playing with words.

not sure i am making my point well - what i am trying to say is that the people who are complaining about the term "stupid" are not helping anyone. they're just exhibiting the same instinctive reaction that you feel in research. whatever name you give it, you feel the same.

The importance of stupidity in scientific research

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