Sridhar, H and Gadagkar, R (2018) Standing conventional wisdom on its head: an interview with Raghavendra Gadagkar. In: Dialogue - Science, Scientists, and Society, 1 (1). pp. 1-16.
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Abstract
Hari Sridhar (HS): The motivation for this interview is the talk you gave in Young Ecologists Talk and Interact (YETI) conference in 2009, which was in the form of advice to young ecologists on how, you think, science should be done. One of the points you made that stayed with me for long after the talk was about making the transition from being a student to doing research – from taking courses to doing research – which you said involves a process of ‘unlearning’. Can you tell us a little more about what form you think this ‘unlearning’ should take? Raghavendra Gadagkar (RG): One of the points I emphasised was how to make the transition from taking courses and passing exams to doing research and making discoveries. And I said that if you want to make this transition, you really have to turn around 180 degrees because the optimum strategy for being successful in taking courses and passing exams is quite the opposite – not just different but the opposite – of the optimum strategy for making discoveries. For example, if one wants to take courses and pass exams then it makes sense for the person to be in a place where one is comfortable. If you have to write a test and you know that you will be given four questions and you have to answer any two, it makes sense for you to focus on the two where you are most comfortable. It doesn’t make sense for you to say: I know the answers to these two, I don’t know the other two, but I am going to try and answer those for which I do not know the answer. But if you are doing research that is exactly what you have to do. It doesn’t make any sense to say I know this, therefore, I am going to work in this area. You have to work on what you don’t know. You have to move away from the comfort zone of knowledge and familiarity and position yourself in the zone of discomfort, comprising of ignorance and unfamiliarity. In other words, you must enjoy feeling stupid. If you say that it’s frustrating because you don’t know what’s going on then you are probably not cut out for research. Also, for taking courses and passing exams you often have to focus on storing information and recalling at the right time, which is not at all useful for research. Now that is easy to say – most people will agree with that – but the problem is much deeper and psychological. Our entire social structure is built on great prestige for knowing facts and a great shame for not knowing facts. Somehow, thinking is not part of our social culture. I guess that’s because for most things you don’t have to think - somebody has thought it for you. You just have to know what it is. In research obviously, that doesn’t work. You have to do exactly the opposite and you have to learn how to think de novo.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Dialogue - Science, Scientists, and Society |
| Publisher: | Indian Academy of Sciences |
| Additional Information: | Sridhar, H. and Gadagkar, R. 2018. Standing conventional wisdom on its head: an interview with Raghavendra Gadagkar . Dialogue - Science, Scientists, and Society 1:1. pp.1-16. doi:10.29195/DSSS.01.01.0004 http://dialogue.ias.ac.in/article/8853/standing-conventional-wisdom-on-its-head |
| Keywords: | Advice to young ecologists, Doing science |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Mar 2021 10:03 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Mar 2021 10:03 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68361 |
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