Science makes everyone feel stupid. This is good!
Science makes everyone feel stupid. This is good!
By Ross Pomeroy | Published: 2024-12-24 15:30:00 | Source: Thinking – Big Think
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In 2008, University of Virginia microbiologist Martin Schwartz I remembered a meeting With an old friend, he had a doctoral student with him and left to attend Harvard Law School instead. At some point during their meeting, he asked her why she dropped out of school.
“She said it was because it made her feel stupid. After two years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.”
Schwartz was surprised by the answer.
“I considered her one of the most brilliant people I knew, and her subsequent career supports that view,” he wrote.
Schwartz thought about what his dear friend had told him.
“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. In fact, I’ve gotten so used to it that I actively look for new opportunities to feel stupid. I didn’t know what to do without that feeling. I even think it’s supposed to be that way.”
Science humiliates even the most intelligent people, bringing them to their intellectual knees. This is the nature of a project that delves into the unknown.
Schwartz’s encounter with his friend inspired an article: “The importance of stupidity in scientific research“, published in 2008 for the magazine Cell science. In it, discuss why it’s not only okay to feel stupid, but why it’s a necessity.
He began his explanation with a simple and correct statement.
“For almost all of us, one of the reasons we loved science in high school and college is because we were good at it.”
Unfortunately, this leaves aspiring scientists with a misleading impression. Because, as most established scientists know, science is not about running tests or getting the right answers! Even the laboratory work performed by most students in high school and college is structured to reach a predetermined end. In research, the outcome is never known at the beginning. Researchers may have a strong idea of what might be going on, but they don’t know for sure.
When aspiring scientists reach graduate and doctoral programs, being right is no longer the goal. The goal is to solve problems. It’s not the same.
“A PhD, in which you have to do a research project, is something completely different,” Schwartz wrote. “For me, it was a daunting task. How could I formulate questions that would lead to important discoveries; or design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions would be completely convincing; or predict difficulties and see ways to overcome them, or, failing that, solve them when they occur?”
Schwartz’s personal breakthrough came when he realized that no one, not even the counselors he looked to, had answers to his problem.
“The crucial lesson was that the range of things I did not know was not only vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. This realization, rather than being frustrating, was liberating. If our ignorance were infinite, the only possible course of action was to get by as best we could.”
Muddling received a doctorate from Schwartz, as did countless other students. In fact, obfuscation is simply what researchers do. Science is like wading through a swamp only to reach a vast, unexplored ocean.
“Science involves confronting our ‘absolute stupidity.’ This kind of stupidity is an existential fact, rooted in our efforts to push our way into the unknown,” Schwartz wrote.
He believes that scientists should accept this stupidity.
“One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to fumble, get it wrong again and again, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. This can be difficult for students who are used to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think science education might do more to facilitate the very big transition: from learning what others once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we feel with being stupid, the deeper we go into that transition.” into the unknown, the greater the possibility of making major discoveries.
In the 16 years since its publication, Schwartz’s article has become a success story Source of solace For desperate PhD students, this is a reminder that feeling lost is a sign that you are on the right track.
this condition Originally published on RealClearScience. Written by Ross Pomeroy, a regular contributor to Big Think.
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