Tapio Seppänen

1. Notes on research basicsSource: Organization and scientific discovery by John Hurley, John Wiley & Sons, 1997 Tapio Seppänen

2. Discovery in science • new and creative insight, and testing • open to examination, replication, dispute, discussion, falsification and verification in the public domain • the final step of a long process • refinement, general principles already known • clarifications • reformulations • complete revisions of older paradigms

3. Effective scientists • self-directed by own ideas, value freedom, vigorous interaction with colleagues • maintain interest to both applications and pure science • not fully with agreement with organization in terms of their interests • tend to be motivated by teh same kinds of thing as their colleagues. But differ in the styles and strategies with which they approach the work

4. Properties of scientists • high level of effective intelligence • openness to experience • freedom from crippling restraints and inhibitions • aesthetic sensitivity • culminate flexibility • independence of thought and action • high level of creative energy • unquestioning commitment to creative endeavor, passion • unceasing striving for solutions to ever more difficult problems

5. More properties of creative scientists • general intelligence • specific scientific ability • high levels of persistence • high ability to develop hypothesis

6. Problem solving • people who put the hypotheses are not usually the same people who apply the best tests to them • Einstein (1938): • the formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill • to raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science

7. Younger scientists or candidates • ability to discover in science bears no correlation with earlier exam records, but good correlation exists with their verbal scores • personality • early support and encouragement extremely important • if people are kept in their small niche, they do not really develop • enthusiasm must be there

8. Nobel laureates • consider not being particularly creative, but instead: • being persistent • having compendious knowledge of the literature and related literature • doing hard work • they have a very clear understanding of the nature of the problem, they define terms clearly, think logically and device experiments to test their theories • personal capacity as organizers and leaders is high

9. Environment • conditions of creative dissonance and limited sloppiness • exceptional scientific talent and creativity are insufficient to discover, good organizational resources are mandatory • levels of organization: • strategic: the province of the research director • tactical: the organization within the laboratory • policy: planning for research and funding on a general scale

10. Some prerequisites • security and stability over a long term • great freedom to experiment • to explore blind alleys • to follow hunches • to recruit just the right people • stimulation of gifted colleagues • inspiration of enthusiastic leaders • encouragement • patience

11. Encouragement • freedom, unexpected rewards, good project management • positive climate of innovation, stimulating physical milieu • scope for playfulness, security of employment • it is a common mistake to take exploratory scientists and reward their insights by promoting them to head of a group devoted to developing their discovery • reward them instead by either giving them more freedom or putting them in charge of their own exploratory group

12. Research groups • best groups tend to be small • good communications • members tend to get on with one another • more productive • levels of trust and intimacy, and sharing of ideas, will diminish with larger groups • large groups tend to become more structured, more rule based, more hierarchical and less flexible

13. Research groups, cont’d • members should not think alike, ‘groupthink’ • sharp decline in productivity after five years • regular changes in the composition of the groups

14. Chance • one of the major ways of transcending an established state of knowledge is to do it unintentionally while trying to solve some problem within the confines of the prevailing paradigm • serendipitous events: eureka events or persistent anomalies leading to new research aims • most people are lucky, they just do not know it • importance of recognizing unexpected results: luck favors a prepared mind

15. Wise guys • Discovery a’ la Edison: • 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration • Discovery by Bacon (1605): • If a man begin with certainties he shall end with doubts; but if he shall be content with doubts he shall end in certainties • Newton: • If I have seen further, it is because I stand upon the shoulders of giants

16. BACKUP SLIDES

17. The classical scientific method • hypothesis development • data gathering • development or refinement of the hypothesis • further data gathering or testing • development of a theory

18. Logical-positivist approach • discovery in science is presented as a calm, logical, rational process • describes well the process of testing theories and provides logic for that • it does not describe the process of developing theories, proposing new formulations or developing new insights • revolutionary science and discovery are excluded from the framework • Poincare: It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we invent.

19. Discovery in universities • most discovery takes place in small university laboratories, not in large industrial ones • free to think any way they wish, can explore what may or not be blind alleys • researchers are frequently motivated by genuinely high levels of curiosity, and by the wish to pry into strange and unconventional corners of the world of nature • easy access to other disciplines and can hold discussions concerning wide areas • migration of scientists from one field to another

20. Discovery in industrial lab’s • tight project planning may lead to predictable results • much of what is going on in commercial laboratories can be regarded as development rather than research • those lab’s that are most organized, controlled and focused on the production of a desired commercial project, in most cases depend on the university lab’s to produce something new in science