Accept your ignorance.
Not an easy thing to do, especially for undergraduate students trying to write Honors theses that demonstrate we in fact know quite a bit about something. This bit of advice was so striking, and it's something I really want to reflect on.
I like to think I know just as much as my professors in my field, even though that's not the case at all. It's hard for me to accept my ignorance, especially when it's clearly pointed out to me. I found a juvenile epiphysis ( the tips of your bones are separate in childhood before they fuse together) in a bag with animal remains, and I immediately pulled it out and said "This looks like a juvenile distal tibia epiphysis." It took her a second to glance over and nonchalantly say "No, that's a juvenile distal radial epiphysis." Even though it was a small piece, it's still embarrassing to mistake a leg bone with an arm bone.
What are you ignorant of, even in your own field and your research?
I think one of the most important things to be able to do in scholarly research in any field is admitting mistakes. It is important to not get down on yourself during the learning process; something I have often struggled with. That said, a fair amount of scientific advancement has come from mistakes; just think about the story of penicillin. In an earlier post it was mentioned by Dr. McKay that it's better to admit to not knowing what is going on than publishing something false. I've had a lot of experience with this; my own project actually took a nearly complete U-turn a few months ago.
ReplyDeleteAfter gathering a lot of data throughout last year we believed that we were seeing an effect that in fact was actually just an artifact of how we were fitting the data. This sort of issue is not specific to science at all; every field with data needs to be careful with fitting. I wrote about three or four drafts of a paper for publication and had to scrap the entire thing and rewrite it when we realized that we had fit the data incorrectly. It turned out that by believing we had the "right" answer, we almost missed something that was even more interesting.
I think the way that I like looking at things now is from afar with a general idea of what I think will happen, but wary of initial findings and even more wary of fitting. Fitting is a powerful tool when used correctly, but in chemistry and really in any field you need to have a reason to be fitting something a certain way. To answer the question posed, I like to think that every time I run an experiment I have no idea what is going to happen. I think my most embarrassing moment was actually when calibrating the laser. We use a notecard to block one of the laser pulses and I left the card there and pressed go on the computer; the laser burned the card (and we lost 2 hours of data collection time). I also have been known to mix up red-shift (increasing wavelength) vs. blue-shift (decreasing wavelength) on a nearly daily basis.
It is indeed eye-opening to see successful professors telling us the importance of admitting one's ignorance. I think once we can frame our ignorance as an opportunity for learning and discovery, instead of a shame-inducing incident, then admitting our mistakes won't be half as challenging. Instead, it become a starting point for further exploration, an inspiration for research, and a template for correction.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it easier for children to admit their ignorance compared to adults? It's because society socializes them to view self-ignorance differently.
Young children all start off being completely fine with the fact that they're ignorant about the world, and because society accepts the fact that they're ignorant, they can channel this into curiosity and become "good scientists" of the world. They're not afraid to ask creatively outrageous questions and then admit their ignorance afterwards, and they keep on trying even after making multiple mistakes.
Yet as we grow up we become complacent about our abilities, or forced by society to put on a mask of competence. I think it's important to break through that mental barrier of pretense in order to preserve the ardent curiosity needed for scientific endeavor (among other endeavors, like artistic).
I think the shift towards interdisciplinary scholarship will create an even larger necessity for admitting our ignorance. After all, how can you expect to know everything equally well in two fields? Psychology has a lot of interdisciplinary research, and it's always great to see experts from different fields educate each other from the basics, and how they're not afraid to ask the simplest questions. I see how it is okay not to know everything in every field, and how collaboration is the answer to a lot of questions, because there is bound to be someone in the university who can complement your ignorance in many many areas.