Summary: <a href="http://www.gayleallen.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Blog-Post-Stuart-Firestein.png" rel="attachment wp-att-3174"></a>How do breakthroughs happen? Not how we think.<br> Movies, books, and articles, constrained by time and word limits, often leave out the realities — the messy work, filled with dead ends, abandoned questions, and accidental discoveries. That is what <a href="https://www.ted.com/speakers/stuart_firestein">Stuart Firestein</a>, Professor of <a href="http://biology.columbia.edu/">Biological Sciences at Columbia University</a>, wants to change.<br> He believes that the roles ignorance and failure play in the discovery process are vastly underappreciated, so much so that he has written two books about them, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ignorance-Drives-Science-Stuart-Firestein/dp/0199828075">Ignorance: How It Drives Science</a>, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Why-Science-So-Successful/dp/019939010X">Failure: Why Science is So Successful.</a> An advisor for the <a href="http://www.sloan.org/major-program-areas/public-understanding-of-science-technology-economics/">Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program for The Public Understanding of Science</a>, Stuart shares insights from his own work as a successful researcher and scientist and from those of his peers, as well as scientific philosophers and historians.<br> Insights from our interview: <br> <br> Knowledge and facts are important insofar as they help us ask better questions<br> Conscious ignorance offers a useful playground for discovery<br> The messy process of science and discovery is where the value lies<br> The disconnect between scientific textbooks and courses and actual science<br> The innovative course he teaches that helps students gain a scientific mindset<br> What it is that makes a problem interesting<br> How scientists, researchers, and creatives look for connections<br> Why failure can be useful even if it never leads to an eventual success<br> The fact that the more expert a person is the less certain they will be<br> How systems limit innovation<br> Why we need better tools for assessment and evaluation in schools<br> Why we need feedback tools that are more diagnostic and less judgmental<br> Why he worries most about people who dislike or are disinterested in science<br> Why he sees his lab as a cauldron of curiosity<br> How writing books requires a different way of looking at things<br> How philosophy and history can impact science in an interactive way<br> <br> Selected Links to Topics Mentioned<br> <a href="https://www.ted.com/speakers/stuart_firestein">Stuart Firestein</a><br> <a href="https://twitter.com/firesteins">@FiresteinS</a><br> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Be-Bad-First-Things-Future/dp/1629561088">Be Bad First by Erika Andersen</a><br> <a href="http://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/UriAlon/sites/mcb.UriAlon/files/uploads/medawar.pdf">Is the Scientific Paper a Fraud by Peter Medawar</a><br> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell">James Clerk Maxwell</a><br> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Fifth-Kandel/dp/0071390111">Principles of Neuroscience</a><br> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kandel">Eric Kandel</a><br> <a href="http://www.kennethrogoff.com/">Kenneth Rogoff</a><br> <a href="http://www.dh-lawrence.org.uk/">D.H. Lawrence</a><br> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Do-No-Harm-Stories-Surgery/dp/125009013X">Do No Harm by Henry Marsh</a><br> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_College_Admission_Test">MCAT</a><br> <a href="https://www.nih.gov/">NIH</a><br> <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/">NSF</a><br> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Brenner">Sidney Brenner</a><br> <a href="http://www.kqed.org/radio/about/staff/michael-krasny.jsp">Michael Krasny</a><br> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper">Karl Popper</a><br> <a href="https://en.wikipedia."></a>
