Written on: August 29, 2025

I am more an admirer of craftsmanship than playing the role of being a strict headmaster of science. So my ethos of science is largely composed of a philosophy of pragmatism where moving the needle of scientific progress, at least the thinking and at best new discoveries (be it minimal), counts as the bar for being a scientifically-aware person, if not a scientist. Writing is a form of thinking and my goal is to express my current perception of scientific research with words. To pursue this objective, I’m going to discuss about my evolving opinions about different elements of scientific research.

Both overt and covert motive of scientific research can be described quite simply - understand reality and alter it without causing adverse side-effects; and during this journey, improve quality of life, of humans at minimum, and of all living beings at maximum. In a nutshell, curiosity, ethics, and moral should be in sync with each other.

Thomas Kuhn, the renowned philosopher of science, had expressed that the scientific progress and impact should be measured by the paradigm shifts - noble ideas, out of the box thinking etc. - the long jumps; whereas according to science historian Jed Buchwald (Kuhn’s student), the progression in science is not always ‘jumpy’ like Mario of Super-Mario, it’s more gradual, compositional, and accumulative. I can relate more with Buchwald’s take (and by the way, Kuhn himself also deviated from his paradigm shift related theory in later years of his life). Having a growth mindset and working continuously on expanding knowledge in a specific subspace in a specific domain should be the main skeleton of one’s research life, where pivotal discoveries are received as byproducts with open arms nonetheless.

What should be the yardstick for measuring progress in science then?Movements in scientific tracks, both in the realm of conceptual understandings and proposal of new ideas, can be discrete and continuous at the same time. A pivotal discovery like Polio vaccine will change the gear of progression drastically in a positive direction and in step-function like manner, hence the discrete jumps; whereas the proposal of changing a minute configuration of centrifuge tubes will have a slower continuous progression pattern. But the focal point here is that both types of scientific pursuits are crucial; maybe not evident momentarily but in future all present efforts can be seen retrospectively as building blocks of the bigger structure of scientific pursuits.

Finding protagonists and antagonists in stories is humane and lores in the arena of science is not an exception to this. Stories about scientists are quite Batman-isque where the inventions and discoveries are possible through the heroic journey of a lone genius where rivalries among scientists (e.g. Tesla-Edison, Newton-Hooke) drive the narratives. I think they are more like infrequent spikes in an overall stable collection of signals.

Competitiveness, not rivalry, a less personalized incentive is more apt in case of publishing quality research papers, in my humble opinion. It can drive innovation and be an antidote to procrastination. Nevertheless, one should be mindful of maintaining integrity and decorum both while showcasing findings and maintaining ethical standpoints. The criticism of the research - be it findings, methods, data collection etc. - should be received in a sporting mode. On other hand, the criticism of others’ research should come from the embodiment of ensuring rigor, not out of antipathy.

When I was a kid, around 5-6 years old, there was a flower garden in front of our house. Gardening was (and still is) my father’s hobby. I used to be around him and watch him weeding out the grass, plucking the dead leaves out of rose bushes, watering the flower beds using a Boustrophedon (zig-zag like) path - it was calm and meditative. There were ants, lots of them on the soil. Other than observing my dad’s prowess in gardening, I was also deeply curious in understanding the pattern of ants movements’ - how they maintain organized non-discrete queues, how the food crumbs are passed from one to another, and eventually how they reach their hill-like (be it tiny on human scale) homes. I would say it was research since I had questions, and was taking mental notes of patterns. But it was not scientific in the sense that I was not following any framework for figuring out the patterns, rather was focusing on quenching my curiosity.

Then how to differentiate between research and scientific research It’s difficult to codify a singular method, rather it’s an amalgamation of one’s knowledge (both general and domain specific), level of exposure to existing works, and some flavor of individual idiosyncrasy (moderate). For example, for a new researcher publishing a survey paper is a good choice since it helps in- a) learning about a specific field while studying existing work, and b) makes one accustomed to scientific writing. But for a 4th year PhD student, it may not be acceptable to publish only survey papers, some form of more noble contribution as first author is expected at that point. The more experience one gains in a specific research field, the more scientific the research becomes since one then learns to convert data into information with less stumbles. And there is no simple cookbook that can be followed to be successful at being a researcher, rather there are heuristics that are hidden inside supervisor’s advice, 2nd reviewer’s comments, chats over coffee at conferences, and other avenues - one has to extract the gist out of these interactions to be a successful researcher.

Known unknowns or unknown unknowns, where should a researcher focus on? At first glance, the answer may seem quite obvious. Choose the known unknowns, since the problem is formulated and one can solely focus on finding solutions. But there is a catch. If a known problem is still open, it is quite likely that others are trying to solve it and there are some common pit holes where one may fall, if not aware of them.

Does that mean a researcher should avoid the challenging problems and play safe? Not at all. It is more a question of timing, proper timing of one’s experience, knowledge, and hardwork; probabilistically which is more likely to be rare during early phases of one’s research career. For instance, during his early career, famous mathematician Andrew Wiles was not entirely focusing on solving Fermat’s Last Theorem ($x^n + y^n = z^n$), rather he was ensuring his academic reputation by- a) publishing quality research papers, and b) performing teaching related duties. Later, when both his research and teaching related reputation (and corresponding job security) was established, he strategically started to design his work hours to focus deeply on proving Fermat’s Last Theorem and cracked a solution in 1995.