The importance of stupidity in research

The biggest differnce between an undergrad and a PhD.

Dec 17, 2024

If you are doing a PhD, you are far from being stupid. But as Martin A. Schwartz tells a story, you might have been feeling that way:

“I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. [...] At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else. I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view.

In your undergrad, you chose a subject because the instructor was great, you found it interesting, and you were probably great at it. In non-research BSc/MSc programs, your ranking and grades depend on avoiding stupidity.

However, research requires a different mindset:

For research, you need to be humble and accept, horribilie dictu, embrace stupidity

But this is something people don't expect:

[...] we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying. I’m not talking about ‘relative stupidity’, in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don’t. I’m also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don’t match their talents. Science involves confronting our ‘absolute stupidity’. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown.

This absolute stupidity, what Stuart Firestein calls Ignorance in Science, implies an inherent uncertainty:

you have the question, but no one has the answer.

Many PhD students struggle with this feeling, even if it doesn't show on the outside. You might even start questioning your intelligence. During your studies, not knowing was a red flag. But not knowing the answer is the core of research: