科研中需要一點愚癡

　　一般地理解，科研可以說是智力的游戲，是聰明人的事情，為何我說需要愚癡呢?這里的愚癡指的是愚蠢和癡迷。

　　據說，Princeton物理系的在讀博士離開物理領域的最多。為什么呢?你想想能夠去Princeton物理系的，在眾多學物理的應該是佼佼者，為何quit的多呢?一是，他們都是聰明人，看過的聰明人也多，一但覺得自己不能作出同樣杰出的成就，他們更愿意找出一個地方他們能夠做出更大成就或者賺跟多的錢。另外一個原因是題外話，據說Princeton的物理系教授都不怎么管學生，學生自生自滅，成就大的反而不多。

　　上面戲說成分太大，畢竟沒有人做過統計。一旦不成立，你會恐怕本文立論就不對了。其實從我個人生活接觸到的人來說。這個立論并沒有不對。上面只是一個眾多例子中的一個。我知道有Stanford的，Yale的等幾個名校的物理學博士，最終轉行的很多，做家庭主婦的也有一些。奇妙的是反倒是差點的學校，還有不少學生還在堅持本行，很多寧可回國去不是特別好的學校，還是不愿意放棄物理研究。

　　分析起來，就是這些聰明人缺少一點愚癡。他們不夠愚蠢，他們相信自己的聰明，所以他們不會愿意面對自己的無知和愚蠢，而無知和愚蠢是當我們面向科研必須面對的一個必然的狀態。你可以在下面Virginia大學的Martin A. Schwartz教授的一封信中可以看到。他們太聰明了，所以很容易能夠找到他們更能出人頭地的領域或者工作，掙更多的錢。聰明人玩玩也不太喜歡面對困難，特別是如果他們很容易看到別的捷徑的時候。還有聰明人很容易得到很多機會，他們不太會珍惜他們隨手可得的機會。比如說，這些去牛校跟牛老板的學生，他們擁有的機會是許許多多在差校跟差老板的博士，在自己痛苦無奈的掙扎中所渴望的，但聰明人沒有經歷過這樣的痛苦，他們不會覺得珍貴。

　　還有聰明人往往缺少一點癡迷，我所說的那種癡迷是在長期的摸索中沒有得到正面的反饋而不懈努力的癡迷，是那種“雖千萬人，我往矣”的癡迷，那種“眾里尋她千百度”的癡迷。08年諾貝爾化學獎得主下村修，1961年，他33歲時做出重要發現。但到80歲的他拿2008諾貝爾化學獎前，他幾乎是默默無聞。他多年沒有實驗室，在約翰森實驗室做了近20年博士后。如果沒有對科學的癡迷，相信他后面堅持不了這么久。

　　科研歷史上，最偉大的成就怕都是那些聰明而性情上又有點愚癡的人做出了的。愛因斯坦的三個小板凳的故事都是小學課本的故事了。而現代社會，恐怕不是科研的黃金時代，在這樣浮躁的社會里，從事科研可能更需要一點點愚癡。

　　我不是“仇智”的人，我也希望自己能夠更聰明一點，在自己的領域做出更大的貢獻。我也不是說從事學術一定比別的行業偉大，雖然重大的科研進展能夠給人類生活帶來巨大的進步，但往往很多所謂的科研，其作用是微乎其微的。但是，當我看到比我聰明，比我擁有跟多的機會的人，拋棄自己的才智和機會去做那些重復的工作(雖然能多掙錢)我真的感到可惜。不過這些都不是我寫這些的本意，其實我更想說的是：我更愿意鼓勵那些不是特別聰明，而又有點愚癡的人。科學可能更需要你們這樣的人。當你覺得自己不夠聰明的時候，你要明白，上天在你身上留下了另外一種可貴的品質，讓你有機會做出更偉大的成就。

　　下面英文來自網絡，中文為我的翻譯，有些地方翻譯的不是很有把握，請指教。

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　　The importance of stupidity in scientific research

　　科研中愚蠢的重要性

　　If you are not feeling frustrated and stupid in your Ph.D study, you are not trying hard enough, and are, by the very nature of good research, failing.

　　(金句：如果你在讀博士期間，你沒有感覺到沮喪或者愚蠢，那么你肯定不夠努力，并且從好科研的本質來講，是很失敗的。)

　　Martin A. Schwartz

　　Department of Microbiology, UVA Health System, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA

　　Accepted 9 April 2008

　　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. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. 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.

　　我最近碰到多年未見的一個老朋友。我們在同一個時期讀博士，都是理科，盡管是不同領域。她后來離開了研究院，去了哈佛法學院，現在是一個很主要環境組織的資深律師。

　　聊著聊著，我們的交談轉向了她為什么離開研究生院。令我及其吃驚的是，她說，這是因為她感覺到自己很愚蠢。并且經過了幾年時間的每天都感到愚蠢的時期，她決心去做

　　一下別的事情。

　　I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way. Let me explain.

　　我認為她是我認識的人中最聰明的幾個人之一而她后來的職業生涯也證明了這一點。她所說的讓我困惑。我想了很久。第二天的某個時候，我突然知道了答案。科學讓我也感到同樣的愚蠢。只是我習慣了而已。我是如此的習慣它，以至于我積極的尋找新的機會來讓自己感到愚蠢。甚至如果沒有這種感覺，我不知道該怎么做。我甚至想，這就應該是這樣的。讓我解釋一下。

　　For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it. That can't be the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart.

　　對我們大多數人來說，我們在高中喜歡科學的一個原因是我們學得好。當然這不是唯一的原因——理解物理世界的熱情和發現新事物的感情也是很重要的。但是在高中和本科，科學只是上上課，做得好不過意味著考試能夠得到正確答案而已。如果你知道答案，你就學的好，并且感覺自己很聰明。

　　A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly frame. the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did.

　　而讀博士，做研究，是完全不同的一回事。對我來說，這是一個很困難的任務：如何把能夠導致杰出發現的問題提出來;如何設計和解釋實驗讓結論絕對值得信賴;預見困難并且找到繞過他們的方法，或者當他們出現的時候能夠解決掉?我的博士課題是交叉學科的，有段時間，當我碰到問題的時候，我都會向我們系里的各分支的專家求救。我記得那一天，Henry Taube(他兩年后得到諾貝爾獎)告訴我他不知道怎么解決我提出的關于他從事領域的一個問題。我當時是個三年級的研究生，我知道Taube知道的比我多一千倍都不在(保守估計)，如果他不知道答案，那大概沒人知道。

　　That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

　　這就是震驚我的時刻：沒人知道。這就是為什么它是個研究課題。并且它是等待我去解決的研究課題。一旦我面對這個事實，我幾天后就解決了這個問題。(這個問題真的很難，我試了很多的方式。)我學到的主要教訓是，我不知道的東西很多，實際上，從現實來講，是無窮。這種認識，以其說是令人沮喪，倒不如說是一種解脫。如果我們的無知是無窮的，那么唯一的行動就是盡全力去沖過去。

　　I'd like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It's a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty.

　　我想起了我們的讀博過程是如何用兩種方式來虐待我們的學生的了。第一，我覺得學生并不是生來就知道做研究是很難的。并且做更重要的研究更難。學習過份苛求的課程更難。使得研究難是因為研究是涉及未知的。

　　我們并不認識我們正在做什么。我們并不知道我們是不是問對了問題或者做了正確的實驗，除非我們最后得到結果或答案。無可否認，科學由于基金和頂級刊物的競爭會更困難。但是除了這些之外，做杰出的研究本身就很難，況且系的，研究所的或者國家的政策并不能讓這種減少這種內在的困難。

　　Second, 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. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don't know'. The point of the exam isn't to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it's the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student's weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student's knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project.

　　第二，我們并沒有為讓我們的學生如何有創造性的愚蠢做足夠的準備工作——就是說，如果我們沒有感到愚蠢，那意味著我們沒有真正的嘗試。我不是說那種 “相對的愚蠢”，比如有學生讀了材料，思考了，而你沒有做。我也不是說那種聰明人沒有做適合他們天賦的領域的研究。科學包括了面對我們的“絕對的愚蠢”。這種愚蠢是存在的事實，導致我們努力去向未知推進。開題和答辯時，教授委員會不停提問直到學生開始說，我不知道答案。開題的關鍵不是看學生是不是知道正確答案。如果都知道答案，教授應該讓他通不過(譯者：如果論文題目都知道答案，它就不成為一個論文題目)。關鍵是找出學生的弱點，部分是為了看他們需要在哪方面多做努力，部分是為了看學生的知識儲備在某足夠高的層次上為做某個課題做好了準備沒有。

　　Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

　　有創造的愚蠢意味著有選擇的無知。專注在重要的課題上把我們放在一個向未知前進的位置上。科學的魅力之一在于我們可以曲折前進，一次又一次的犯錯，并且感覺還好只要每次都學到一些東西。好無疑問，這將是很困難的，特別是對那些習慣于只想要正確答案的學生。好無疑問，某種程度的信心和情感上的達觀會有幫助，但是我認為科學教育可以輕化這樣的一個大轉變：從學習別人的發現到做自己的發現。如果我們面對愚蠢越自如，我們越能更深入到未知里面，并且更能夠做出大的發現。

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