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Getting to Eureka
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17920 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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3 / 1990 |
2,645 Words |
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Solomon H. Snyder
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From encounters with outstanding scientists over the years, I have learned that there is no single road to success when it comes to scientific discovery. Some Nobel laureates are sloppy and intuitive; others are impeccable and precise. Yet scholars of the discovery process know that 90 to 99 percent of the most important scientific findings are made by 1 to 10 percent of scientists. A small, gifted group of investigators seems invariable to spawn creative ideas and crucial observations. What distinguishes these innovative few?
Historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have tried for years to identify qualities that make for outstanding scientific contributions. Many of these studies have focused on the distinguishing characteristics of Nobel laureates. What they found was that intelligence as measured by IQ scores, schools attended, socioeconomic status, parental occupation, the warmth or coldness of childhood environment - none of these factors seem to be particularly relevant. The best way to predict who will make a discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize is simply to examine who trained whom.
Most scientists are intelligent but not remarkably brilliant. Certainly, a good scientist should be incisive, capable of separating artifacts from meaningful data. But what seems to matter most in the giants is a creativity mixed together with these critical skills. And from my own observation I am convinced that this creative aspect of scientific discovery is best communicated through apprenticeship. In this respect science is no different from other creative endeavors. Among musicians and artists, the chain of mentor-student relationships embraces all the greatest innovators. Throughout the Renaissance the most important painters followed one another in student-teacher pairs for several generations. Chains of teachers and their students can be similarly traced among leading composers and architects.
Soaking Up Experience
Science, like other aspects of a culture, is a communal activity. The way in which scientists work together in teams is crucial to the discovery process. And the most important team of all is the one made up of a mentor and a student. Just how do mentors influence their laboratory students? I can speak only form my own experience. I spent two years with [Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine] Julius Axelrod in a small laboratory immediately adjacent to his. We would talk about research several times every day. I soaked him up through all the pores of my being.
Julie was more concerned with dreaming up new ideas than with the technical virtuosity of experimentation. In fact, both of us are a little sloppy and definitely impatient. In his eagerness to acquire new data, Axelrod was ever devising simpler ways of conducting experiments. This seemingly trivial quirk was one of the more important gifts I received from him.
Though he might break a few test tubes in an experiment, Axelrod remains the most skillful experimentalist I know. Far more crucial than manual dexterity is the ability to design the simplest possible experiment, one which can ask and answer the widest range of question. Thus, in a typical experiment employing 20 test tubes, Axelrod might be addressing 10 distinct, important issues. If only one pair of test tubes pays off, he will have made a new finding. By contrast, some
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