stupidity and research

I have recently stumbled across Martin Schwartz' essay "The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research".

Although I do not agree with everything he states, I have to highlight a few paragraphs:

"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."

Martin goes on to admit that he has the same feeling and to suggest that the key to overcoming that painful awareness is to accept it and get used to it. Even get addicted to it. He explains that it's important to understand that it is not just him not knowing the answers: It's everyone's problem, from the student to the big prof:

"Science involves confronting our 'absolute stupidity'."

I think Martin may be right here, but I think he neglects the fact that unfortunatelly many people hide their own "absolute stupidity" (instead of embracing it) by making others feel "realtive studpid". In a different line of thoughts he continues:

"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. (...) 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.(...) 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."

Martin's bottom line is "if we don't feel stupid, it means we're not really trying". By this he means that we are used to asking easy questions, so that we can easily find the answers. It might not be challenging at all, but it is quite comforting to know we are smart. Since we have been brought up in a tradition that does not tolerate uncertainty, most people I know are striving to find predictability and certainty. I believe this is, in itself, not a bad thing, as long as one's aspirations are in concordance with one's environment! But if this is not the case, it might cause a great deal of suffering. And then, one has to make a decision: either accept the undeniable truth or reject it and find a more convenient one. The good thing about accepting it, according to Martin, is that it changes the entire perspective, it liberates one from ever attempting to be "smart". I am determined to accept it. But I still have a long way to go.

I believe that in order to achieve victory we must first conquer ourselves. Martin suggests that acceptance might be the first step in doing so. I will now add another interesting idea: Then, after making the choice "You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair." (adapted from Taisen Deshimaru). Because without this devotion, accepting stupidity is not a good choice. Stupidity must not only be embraced, it must be exploited.