To make a scientific discovery you need a plan not a map

If I told you there was a study that found what actions you take for the next 10 minutes determines whether or not you will make a scientific discovery in your life…how would you spend that time?

How does thinking about the impact of what your doing right now on your discovery potential make you feel? Guilty, curious, confused, even overwhelmed?

Unfortunately, no such study exists.  Instead, there are plenty of biographies analyzing how the Einstein’s of the world spent their time.

Don’t get me wrong.

Getting inspired by previous scientific discoveries and the stories behind them is wonderful motivation.

But it doesn’t tell you how to spend the next 10 minutes of your life to make your own discoveries. For that you need an action plan.

So let me share the scientific discovery framework that I’ve developed, which will give you a plan.  It’s helped me see how discovery gets done and it will help you too.

There are lots of parts to scientific discovery, but they all fit together in a logical whole.

In a series of posts, I’ll explain my framework for connecting those parts and how you can prioritize your efforts to get moving on making a discovery.

Links to other parts of the series are at the bottom of each post.

This first post lays out the big picture of scientific discovery. Get ready for an information download! Stick with it. Don’t worry if it feels like a lot. Shorter follow-up posts will guide you. Jump in and out of the series anywhere – the posts are all standalone. You can take it all in as you have time.

Let’s get to it.

I’ve identified six core areas that power scientific discovery:

1. Discovery repertoire. The personal portfolio of techniques that you use to get science done is your scientist’s repertoire. There are four sections to your internal portfolio: how you think about your science (mindset), what tasks you know how to complete to get science done (activities), the recipes you have for combining outcomes with actions (skills), and what you know (knowledge). When you have a solid plan, but still don’t make progress on your science it means you need to strengthen a weak part of your repertoire.

2. Discovery capacities.  Learning new things in science and technology is driven by four human capacities: innovation, invention, insight, and scientific discovery. Capacities get different results because they are driven by different motivations. Innovation motivates us to improve the way something works. Invention motivates us to build devices that will do something useful. Insight motivates us to change how we see the world. Scientific discovery motivates us to explain how the world works. Insight and scientific discovery are core capacities that build on each other.

3. Discovery vital qualities.  The difference between a scientific discovery and regular scientific research is that a new discovery-level scientific finding will have at least one of three vital qualities:  It will shift our perspective on the world (be radical), it will link knowledge to make a broader range of predictions about the world (be universal), and/or it will be new knowledge (be novel). Your work should have one of these qualities as an objective to aim for discovery-level science.

4. Discovery impact classes.  Scientific discovery intuitively feels more high impact than regular science. That impact lies on a continuum from low to high, determined by how many vital qualities a discovery captures. Minor class discoveries possess only one of the three vital qualities. Major class discoveries possess at least two and legacy class discoveries must have all three. Science spans from regular research to legacy class discoveries on an incremental spectrum defined by these qualities. So, start small and build up to the big discoveries.

5. Discovery learning categories.  Scientific discovery learns something new about the world. What you learn falls into three categories: something about an unknown object (object-type), something about the properties of an object (attribute-type), or something about how and why the world works the way it does (mechanism-type).  Some categories are easier to make discoveries in because the learning curve is smaller.

6. Discovery evolution phases.  Most scientific discoveries evolve through five phases, which I call the discovery cycle.  First, you ask an unanswered question (question).  Then you form ideas for an answer (ideation).  You make those ideas into tests in the real world (articulation). You run the tests and evaluate the results (evaluation). And if the results repeatedly prove true then they become a scientific discovery (verification).  Troubleshooting your scientific discovery progress is easier if you know what phase you are in because unique problems trip up scientists at each phase.

The framework I’ve developed lets you craft a scientific discovery action plan, troubleshoot your progress, and connect specific activities and techniques with the results you want to achieve.

The simplest starting point? Aim for a minor class, attribute-type discovery that is universal. That represents a baby step from current science to something new.  And if you hit an obstacle check your insight in a systematic way and seek out techniques to boost you from one phase of scientific discovery to the next.

No matter where you start, be inspired by the scientific discovery stories of others, but don’t stay stuck in them.  Discovery isn’t a sightseeing tour through known territory. It’s a push toward unknown territory.

Simply put, to make a scientific discovery you need a plan for how to tackle the unknown, not a map of the known.

 

Take Action

Once you’ve got a framework and a plan, spend the next 10 minutes taking action.  You’ll be 10 minutes closer to making your next discovery.

 

Related Links

 

On The Insightful Scientist (InSci) website

Blog (The Scientist’s Log)

• Mega-series overview post
  • Architecture of Scientific Discovery: A productivity system for scientists
• Top related posts
  • Nuclear weapons are bad and excess plutonium makes the problem badder
  • A fictional scientist is the way to learn how to make scientific discoveries
  • Old version of this post — Architecture of Discovery: Overview
  • A Good Map is Hard to Find

Research (Research Spotlight)

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How-To’s (The Scientist’s Repertoire)

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Infographics (The Illustrated Scientist)

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Printables (Spark Points)

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Other blogs

Bulletproof Musician (performance psychology)

• Why Planning Out Your Day in Too Much Detail Could be Counterproductive

zen habits (achieving purpose)

• The Do Plan, or Why We Know But Don’t Do

Farnam Street (famous insights)

• The Map Is Not the Territory

Around the web

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How to cite this post

Bernadette K. Cogswell, “To make a scientific discovery you need a plan not a map”, The Insightful Scientist Blog, September 11, 2020.

 

[Page feature photo:  Photo by Torbjorn Sandbakk on Unsplash.]