Martin Schwartz writes in an essay in the Journal of Cell Science about running into an old friend (who became a big time attorney). This friend told Schwartz that she left grad school because it made her feel stupid. That’s when Schwartz (and I, while reading the article) realized that grad school made us feel stupid too. All the time, every day. Stupid.

Grad school – and science in general – is based upon studies of the unknown. There are certain skills to master and thought processes to hone, but overall we are working on problems which no one has the answer to, no matter how many grants and Nobel Prizes they have earned. Sometimes, the results don’t make sense and you just have to accept it. Right?

Schwartz argues that if schools teach students to be “productively stupid” (ie if you’re not feeling stupid in your work it means you are not really trying, to paraphrase), and if we, as students, in turn confront and embrace our ’absolute stupidity" early on, we will be far more likely to succeed.

“One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.”

Do you agree? Should students stop fighting to be on top of every detail of their project and just accept the unknowns, and allow them to flow along till their natural resolution (assuming one exists)? How easy is it to accept one’s ‘absolute stupidity’?

doi:10.1242/jcs.033340