Clippings

The tacit premise of this book is that behaviors appropriate to launching a scientific career can be learned. Many of my colleagues doubt this, throw up their hands and propound the Darwinian approach. They say that scientific maturity comes with experience and cannot be taught. The fittest students will survive. The rest will not, according to the law of the science jungle. As I mentioned at the outset, adopting this fatalistic, laissez-faire viewpoint does have the advantage that busy professors need not spend time trying to teach their students science survival strategies. On the other hand, if they are wrong, then they are guilty of avoiding an important responsibility.

I take a behaviorist viewpoint. Although the inner feelings and thoughts that go along with “scientific maturity” may be real, and may only come with experience, what is needed to make the transition from graduate student to professional researcher is to learn certain “behaviors.” … They are not all that hard to learn, and the underlying ideas do not tax one’s intellectual powers greatly. It should be obvious that the problem with waiting for experience to dictate appropriate behaviors is that one is very likely to fail as a result of the bad experiences that are supposed to produce the appropriate feelings. It is far better to learn from the bad experiences of others than from your own.