The Dirty Secret of Science

By Jon Miller | Post Date: January 17, 2010 10:16 PM | Comments: 5

There is an interesting article in Wired magazine titled The Neuroscience of Screwing Up. The main lesson from the article is that humans innately ignore inputs that contradict or don't fit within their world views. As such, we need other around us to look at that same phenomena or data, ask questions and poke holes in our illusions and misconceptions. We need help of others to keep us from screwing up.

The neuroscience part of our article refers to several behaviors and parts of our brain that are designed to help us ignore inputs that don't fit with our expectations. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or DLPFC, is particularly troublesome. This part of our brain edits out the bits of reality that don't fit with our preconceptions. We have all witnessed people seeing but not seeing an unpleasant piece of reality, and it seems even the well-honed minds of scientists do this when faced with unexpected results of experiments.

When an experiment fails, we are often disappointed but we should place more value on the unexpected result of experimentation. Some fortunate scientists discovered penicillin, x-rays, even cosmic microwave background radiation quite by accident or as a byproduct of other experiments. It makes one wonder just how many world-changing discoveries have been overlooked, ignored or buried by our dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Kevin Dunbar, Director of the Laboratory for Complex Thinking and Reasoning gives a memorable quote:

"Experiments rarely tell us what we expect. That's the dirty secret of science."

So it's all the more important to listen to what they are telling us. Yet our brains, left to their own devices, are efficient at snipping out the bits that don't fit in. The article reveals that the breakthroughs were not achieved as a result of brilliant individual researchers working isolation but instead

"questions asked during a group session frequently triggered breakthroughs, as scientists were forced to reconsider data they'd previously ignored"

The most productive lab meetings were those that included people from different backgrounds. This forced the experts to drop some of their jargon and resort to metaphors in order to understand each other. A team of researchers deeply lost within the technical details may become unable to look at the problem in a new way. Or faced with an unexpected result, they may be unable to understand its significance. Thanks in part to our DLPFC we are too easily able to ignore information that does not support our personal worldview or experimental framework.

To anyone who has been on a kaizen event with a cross-functional kaizen team this is not a surprising finding. The first of 10 commandments of kaizen is "abandon fixed ideas" so that we can all be open to the facts and observed experimental results, rather than our preconceived notions. The more we let go of our preconceived notions, the less of a frame of reference the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has to work with in editing out the bits of reality that don't fit it. The more we can work with the facts, the less the chance we'll screw it up.

This all reminds me of some words from American economist John Kenneth Galbraith,

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof."

When conducting experiments either for pure research or to make improvements in your processes and systems, form a cross-functional team, leave your preconceptions at the door, look at the facts no matter how unexpected, and beware the DLPFC.

Comments are moderated to filter spam and inappropriate content. There may be a delay before your comment is published.

Name:	Email:	Website:

Your comment: