Tomorrow one of my students will defend his dissertation and hopefully transition to the community of doctoral scholars. I’m looking forward to it. Thinking back on his thesis work with me, my mind goes back to the project he was working on at the beginning of his pilgrim’s progress and how massively it has evolved over the course of the work. That’s the nature of science, you can’t predict how it will play out. How one experiment that doesn’t work leads to a new experiment that does, but gives you a totally unexpected result and forces you to change directions.
Which bring me to the topic of management style. How is one to manage science given the challenges predicting course? Should we look to the strategy of the day-trader or alternatively play science as one might play poker (it doesn’t matter if you have the best hand as long as you win what’s in the pot). I reject both of these approaches. It seems to me that the best management is that which creates an environment that is likely to produce some successes (think bacterial cultures on an agar plate). And then, I would suggest to step back and watch the experiment unfold. Unfortunately that’s very difficult.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 