blog

The student was at the board, hands covered in chalk, mixed with a bit of sweat. He was in the middle of his oral prelim exam, and being grilled about his hypothesis. How would he design his experiments to test it? Did he have the proper controls in place? Would his measurements be within the limits of accuracy?

He struggled to get the answers to the questions out, with a gripping fear that his experimental design would be inadequate, and that the committee would shoot it all down, making him repeat this exercise over again next year.

Yet in all the questioning posed by the serious professors, and in all the fear that the student was experiencing, there was an elephant in the room that nobody discussed: was the hypothesis good enough to begin with? Were the questions really worth asking? If they weren’t, how would he improve them?

Some students had flunked out at the written prelim stage due to having poorly constructed hypotheses and questions. Sometimes it was difficult to separate bad writing from inadequate ideas. But in every case, the students were sent back to do it all over again, without a lot of guidance on a key point: how do you come up with really good questions?

If you think this is just a minor issue, then consider Albert Einstein for a second.

Was he famous for his experimental design acumen? No. In fact, he was so poor at certain left-brained activities that he flunked High School Algebra.

Rather, he was famous for right-brained activities, like asking great questions and having brilliant new insights. He synthesized disparate observations and facts into a new whole, and translated that into elegant mathematical language.

Since Einstein’s time, many people have designed and implemented experiments that test various aspects of Einstein’s theories. That is important work. But is it as important as the original act of creation of the theories? Einstein’s name will always be associated with “relativity,” much like Newton’s name will always be associated with “Newtonian physics.” Yet the hardworking people who test those theories are never going to achieve the same level of recognition. You can call it cruel, but it is simply reality.

Einstein was a creative genius – as are most of the names that have staying power in science. That’s not to say that every creative scientist gets appropriately recognized for their work, but without creativity, there isn’t much possibility of recognition. That’s because we humans deeply value creativity, even though we rarely speak of it. The word creativity is (usually) reserved for artists and musicians and the like.

In my former department, we spent an extraordinary amount of time and energy putting students through the prelim exam process, to assure they were sufficiently qualified to go onto a doctorate. We’d grill and quiz students: do they have the proper control experiments, are the experiments really going to test the hypothesis properly? Will the outcomes be interpretable?

But in all of that work and effort, there was precious little attention paid to helping the students learn to develop better hypotheses and to ask better questions in the first place. Sometimes this would happen incidentally as part of the process, but it was not a direct, stated goal. The process did nothing to vet the students for this type of creativity, though I would argue that its presence or absence will be one of the greatest determinants of the student’s future contributions to the lot of mankind.

I think there’s a simple reason why: hypothesis generation, and asking good questions, involves creative, right-brained thinking. Nobody pays any attention to it, because “creativity” and similar right-brained activities are assumed to have no place in hard science.

Modern scientific training is nearly always focused on left-brain activities like deduction, hypothesis testing, calculation, statistics, and so on.

Yet the big leaps in science come from synthesis, i.e. putting disparate facts together to produce fundamental new leaps in a field. The best scientists – the ones you hear about in the news, who get the big prizes, and so on – all do this. But most aren’t aware that they are doing it, or how vital this ability is to their own success. They are successful, often without knowing why.

And so when it comes to training the next generation, it is all but ignored. It is swept under the rug, like crumbs after a pizza party.

Creativity training, under the guise of more palatable terms like “hypothesis generation” or “how to ask great scientific questions” should be a part of every undergrad and graduate scientific curriculum. And maybe as a side benefit, by exercising the right brain a bit more often, these youngsters would learn how to write more coherently and expressively (since writing is a right-brained activity).

The student that I mentioned at the beginning of the blog post would have been far better off in life if we’d worked with him on asking good questions from the start, rather than just working with him on how to design good experiments to answer those questions. Both are important, yet one was entirely lacking in his training.

But, alas, it may be quite some time before such classes are added to curricula. In the meantime, here are a few simple exercises you can do, a few of which are inspired by Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind:

1. Laugh and play. These are right-brained activities. Most people I know do not get enough of either one of these. They will give a work-out to your right brain to get your creative muscles in order.

2. Lighten up. This is closely related to number one, but more basic. It seems our whole culture has gotten into a mode of taking itself far too seriously, and everywhere I go in academia, I see people with long, tired faces. I see people stressed about grants, funding, students, committees, and teaching. You can choose to ignore that stuff, if you want to. If you can’t lighten up, it will be very hard to laugh and play.

3. Get involved with music. One National Academy of Sciences member I know likes to play Jazz Piano at night clubs. Most of the brilliant folks I know have a strong affinity for music – listening to it, creating it, or both.

4. Write every day. Reflecting back on my own career, the times that I really struggled to write were the times when I was not doing it regularly, then came up against a deadline and was forced to do it in one big rush. That’s like running a marathon without any training beforehand. Almost nobody would attempt that, and if they did, much pain would result. Yet I see people doing this all the time in academic work, such as when grant proposals are due.

5. Focus on good design. Good designs – whether in art, architecture, or in experiments – are timeless. While there is no quantitative way to measure good design (that I know of), it is usually obvious when you see it. Place a premium on coming up with better experimental designs, on developing better grant proposals. Become emotionally involved in what you’re doing, rather than justturning the crank.

Your right brain needs exercise, because our society – and particularly, academia – doesn’t value what it does. Yet increasingly, it is vital to your success in the world, because it is what drives the important leaps forward in all areas of human progress. We are at a point in history when some big leaps forward are sorely needed.

And, if you would like some insights on the right-brained activity of grant writing, to overcome any challenges you may be having with it, I may be able to help.