Category: Academia • Science Education
Posted on: July 25, 2008 3:31 PM, by Coturnix
Now this is a title of a paper in a scientific journal that will make one's eyebrows go up: The importance of stupidity in scientific research (by Schwartz J Cell Sci.2008; 121: 1771) :
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.
I am not sure what he wrote is really what she meant, but anyway, this was a nice way for him to start the article. What he is talking about is not really stupidity. I'd call it ignorance. And grad school teaches you to cherish and relish in your ignorance, as that is the main motivator in working every day to diminish it a little bit at a time by discovering something new, a little bit of information about the way the world works that in some reduces your own and everyone else's ignorance. If you are successful in acquiring this mindset - enjoying the ambiguity of science, having ease with saying "I don't know....and, by the way, nobody does" - you feel good. If you are a different kind of person, you may as well feel stupid:
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.
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/07/the_importance_of_stupidity_in.php?utm_source=readerspicks&utm_medium=link
