Some good links

6/16/2012

1. How easy are the logistics of doing research in Tanzania? Almost as easy as immigrating to the U.S. Tit for tat, I suppose.

2. Considering graduate school? Know all of your options, because sometime its like this. And Forbes thinks you shouldn't. Number two is the most painfully true, even if you get funding (hello opportunity costs). And number four is the weirdest.

3. A blog on HarvestChoice, a research project (with a fantastic website) based out of the University of Minnesota that focuses on investments and opportunities for more productive farming in developing countries.

2 Comments

Raghu

6/16/2012 12:16:35 pm

Regarding point 2, here is an interesting article:
The importance of stupidity in scientific research
http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full

Aine McCarthy

6/16/2012 09:13:24 pm

This is awesome, Raghu! Thanks for sharing. My favorite calculus professor in undergrad used to say that math was really like bumbling around in a dark room: you bump into a few things and learn that somethings there, but mostly you don't have any idea.

This last paragraph is amazing:

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.

Some good links

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Aine Seitz McCarthy

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