Learning to do science without being told what to do

[svletana]

How do you learn to be a scientist without being told what to calculate, what to think about, etc? I feel like my hand has been held this whole time when I was doing experiments or calculations, I feel kind of unable to come up with new ideas myself sometimes.

Are you a scientist? (doing a PhD or something) How did you start this journey?
Thank you!

 

[berkeman]

Your Profile page doesn't list your level of education or what education you have in progress. What is your background so far? That will help us tune our replies to be the most helpful for you.

 

[analogdesign]

I think you need to get really deeply into a subject before you know enough to know where the holes are and what is known and unknown. It does sound like you're a student. I only started forging my own path maybe halfway through my PhD. At that point I had read every paper multiple times and knew the state-of-the-art backwards and forwards. I could start to see what hadn't been tried yet (and was still potentially a good idea). Once I had that idea, which ended up being my thesis topic, the work kind of did itself. It was usually obvious what I needed to do next and if it wasn't my advisor was good at making keen suggestions.

So, I would say you don't get to that level typically until you're partway through your PhDs. Many engineers never really get there.

 

[symbolipoint]

You first need more life experience. Then you need to have tried to study something, anything, for several months. Then you need to be curious about something, and LOOK for some way to ask a question and TRY to figure a way to find or produce information to allow you to answer that question.

Have you ever followed a food recipe, and the result was not something you wanted? Did you do something about it, or did you just tell yourself that the recipe was bad and you would not make it again? So you might either tend toward some scientific thinking or move away from any scientific thinking.

 

[Dale]

I feel kind of unable to come up with new ideas myself sometimes.

Are you a scientist? (doing a PhD or something) How did you start this journey?

I completely understand the feeling. Once you have chosen a general field of study you need to read the professional journals voraciously. As you read them think “what next” or “how would I apply this to a different problem”. Then, run your ideas by your advisor. He will probably be able to tell you where it has already been done (in my case usually decades earlier). Don’t be frustrated, even though they were not actually new ideas they were new to you and you still came up with them. Eventually you will hit on one that is truly novel.

 

[svletana]

Your Profile page doesn't list your level of education or what education you have in progress. What is your background so far? That will help us tune our replies to be the most helpful for you.

Sorry i forgot to say! I am completing my university degree (licenciatura) in Buenos Aires :)

 

[FactChecker]

At the graduate level, your adviser should have problems that he thinks would be good PhD problems. You don't just need a problem to work on; you need something that you can make real progress on even though you don't have a lot of research experience.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Matching available resources (your abilities, library resources, computing resources, advice quality, lab equipment, funding) to interesting and novel problems is one of the big challenges in designing experiments and research projects. I mentor lots of research (high school through senior undergraduate) and this is something we circle back to early and often in the design and brainstorming stages of project development. I usually start students by giving them a long list of possible projects for which the resources are most likely available and I also have them write down all the ideas that they have for things that interest them. In our discussions, we always circle back to how we can assess the resources needed and whether they can be acquired. Project planning is an excersise in reading the menu right to left - how much does it cost over and above what we already have in the fridge?

The best projects are usually the ones that left lots of good ideas on the cutting room floor. This article may help you develop improved brainstorming approaches:
https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/niches-publishable-undergraduate-research/