W5 Permitting Creativity in Science

In the article Permitting Creativity in Science the author Janet Bavelas talks about how to encourage novel and creative ideas in science.

According to it, as a scientists (or science students), when you notice something different, you should:

1) Avoiding dismissing it as something coincident and remember that “the more important the novel idea is, the more likely it will appear wrong at first, because it would inevitably upset the orthodox view”.

2) Never try to find a category to put it in. That is, do not simply dive into the literature review and simply put the novel idea in any literature.

3) Refrain from resorting to an expert of that field who would likely to underplay the idea with existing theories.

4) Try to design a new mode of experiment instead of simply replicating the existing ones.

5) Think out of the standard format of a journal article in the early stages.

6) Keep calm and carry on.

Bearing those principles in mind and conceiving your new ideas, you should then:

1) Try to think of other observations that feel similar;

2) Develop a schema;

3) Articulate your idea in analogy;

4) Unearth, instead of inventing, your modal;

5) Keep observing to see whether the new findings fit into your modal;

6) Present the result to other in a “preliminary but respectable manner”.

This article impresses me very much for its encouragement of one’s pursue of his/her finding. It keeps reminding us the importance of being curious and, more importantly, diligent—do not just try to lay back on existing knowledge or framework.

One “stop” that stops me from reading is the concept of null hypothesis. It is mentioned when the author reminds us not to dismiss an interesting idea or observation as a one-time-only random event in the earliest stage. The writer suggests that the null hypothesis should be applied in later phase. As a layman, I did not know the term. After research, I found that it is a method in inferential statistics which assumes there is no relationship between two measured phenomena. I think this hypothesis is a useful tool to keep us objective. But as the article says, if it is used too early, it might also cause us to miss some would-be-fruitful ideas.

In the article, the author keeps telling us to be alert of authorities, existing knowledge or experts in the field, since they may simply fit our novel ideas into any existing framework and nip our notions in the bud. So I want to hear from you: were you an educator and a student comes to you to talk about some interesting ideas he/she has, what would you do to keep them informed of relevant knowledge while not killing their motivation to further dig into it?