A summary of the basics discovered so far.
Scientists generally don’t spend much time thinking about what makes a scientist great, since they have lots to do already. However, it may still be useful to know a bit about the causes of great science, so one can make more informed choices on where to concentrate one’s time and effort. In this post a brief overview of the factors that literature indicates as relevant..
‘Great science’ is the production of information or ‘memes’ that are novel and important. In practice, it is also necessary to communicate that information to others in such ways that the idea spreads, and one is seen as the originator of it. A great scientist is ‘simply’ someone who produces great science, sometimes just once, usually multiple times.
So what determines whether an individual scientist produces great science?
Major influences:
-knowledge: 10 year rule/10.000 hours learning about a field – possibly more in science! Mere years spent ‘working as a scientist’ do not count, it is about the number of hours that a scientist has learned about his or her field.
-excellent mentors: almost all Nobel laureates had been PhD-student or postdoc of a (future) Nobel laureate or nominee for the award. This is not merely a selection effect: teaching likely plays a major role since the mentors educating most future Nobel laureates, Enrico Fermi and Arnold Sommerfeld, also spent strikingly high amounts of time with their students.
-ambition/saying no: eminent scientists as a rule avoided administrative duties and (sometimes) teaching as much as possible.
-motivation: great scientists generally focus on subjects that fascinate them, instead of following fashion or doing what others tell them to.
-a bigger acceptance of risk (research that could fail)
-superior research strategies, such as spending more time on getting and refining ideas, and seeking out more criticism and more collaborations than is ‘customary’.
Moderate influences:
-type of motivation: liking to work hard, or wanting to master a field is good. Being overly focused on ‘winning’/competitiveness seems to be counterproductive.
Minor influences:
-luck: Luck can play a role in science, but overall ‘chance favors only the prepared mind’ – most great scientists made several great discoveries, too many to explain by mere luck.
Variable-strength influences:
-IQ: Having a low or average IQ may prevent you from becoming a scientist in the first place. However, IQs that are sufficient to get you into PhD-programmes (over 115-120) all seem to be sufficient for pretty good scientific careers, looking at people like biologist Edward O. Wilson (IQ around 123) and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman (IQ around 125). So for most scientists, IQ is not really a concern.
Unknown influences:
We definitely don’t know everything about scientific excellence yet. Some things that still puzzle me even after thousands of pages of reading:
-what exactly did famous mentors teach their pupils? And could less-great mentors emulate that?
-knowledge is essential for scientific excellence – but what to learn, exactly, and what would be the best methods to learn it?
-are there things besides IQ and personality that are relatively fixed yet relevant for scientific excellence?
-would a sufficiently intelligent child be able to become any kind of scientist with proper stimulation, or are there tendencies that would ‘predispose’ one to chemistry, maths, history, psychology or such?
So there is lots to discover yet – but that does leave room for following blogposts!