Flow Chart
TED
Research Gate
Thomas Clark, British Abolitionist:
I Want to Help
vs.
This Cannot Be
Open Notebook Science
Start watching at 3:08, Stop at
5:58
-Shows how this form of open
science is good for editing flawed data/procedures
Why We Choose ‘Open
Science’
-Allen Institute using open
science to accelerate research on brain diseases
-Discusses rationale, pros/cons,
and process involved with choosing open science
Better Means
Innovative business model that uses
openness/equality between workers for efficiency
Cracking Open the
Scientific Process
Passage from The Great Influenza, an account of the 1918 flu epidemic,
author John M. Barry writes about scientists and their research.
Certainty
creates strength. Certainty gives one something upon which to lean. Uncertainty
creates weakness. Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative
steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant
obstacles.
To
be a scientist requires not only intelligence and curiosity, but passion,
patience, creativity, self-sufficiency, and courage. It is not the courage to
venture into the unknown. It is the courage to accept—indeed, embrace—uncertainty.
For as
Claude
Bernard, the great French physiologist of the nineteenth century, said, “Science
teaches us to doubt.”
A
scientist must accept the fact that all his or her work, even beliefs, may
break apart upon the sharp edge of a single laboratory finding. And just as Einstein
refused to accept his own theory until his predictions were tested, one must
seek out such findings. Ultimately a scientist has nothing to believe in but
the process of inquiry. To move forcefully and aggressively even while
uncertain requires a confidence and strength deeper than physical courage.
All
real scientists exist on the frontier. Even the least ambitious among them deal
with the unknown, if only one step beyond the known. The best among them move
deep into a wilderness region where they know almost nothing, where the very
tools and techniques needed to clear the wilderness, to bring order to it, do
not exist. There they probe in a disciplined way. There a single step can take
them through the looking glass into a world that seems entirely different, and
if they are at least partly correct their probing acts like a crystal to precipitate
an order out of chaos, to create form, structure, and direction. A single step
can also take one off a cliff.
In
the wilderness the scientist must create . . . everything.
It is grunt work, tedious work that begins with figuring out what tools one
needs and then making them. A shovel can dig up dirt but cannot penetrate rock.
Would a pick be best, or would dynamite be better—or would dynamite be too
indiscriminately destructive? If the rock is impenetrable, if dynamite would
destroy what one is looking for, is there another way of getting information
about what the rock holds? There is a stream passing over the rock. Would
analyzing the water after it passes over the rock reveal anything useful? How
would one analyze it?
Ultimately,
if the researcher succeeds, a flood of colleagues will pave roads over the path
laid, and those roads will be orderly and straight, taking an investigator in
minutes to a place the pioneer spent months or years looking for. And the
perfect tool will be available for purchase, just as laboratory mice can now be
ordered from supply houses.
Not
all scientific investigators can deal comfortably with uncertainty, and those
who can may not be creative enough to understand and design the experiments
that will illuminate a subject—to know both where and how to look. Others may
lack the confidence to persist. Experiments do not simply work. Regardless of
design and preparation, experiments—especially at the beginning, when one proceeds
by intelligent guesswork—rarely yield the results
desired. An investigator must make them work. The less known, the more one has
to manipulate and even force experiments to yield an answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment