I read a very interesting article the other day called, Beware ‘the curse of expertise’ (http://business.financialpost.com/2013/07/10/beware-the-curse-of-expertise/?__lsa=96c0-6d2f). In it, the writer describes how many organizations fail to achieve change or move ahead of technology because they have people who are ‘experts’ in an area and these ‘experts’ tend to block “breakthrough solutions”.
Now it isn’t always that these people want to purposefully block new solutions or innovation but with all of the knowledge they have acquired makes them biased against change that doesn’t fit in with their preconceived notions. Unfortunately it is these people that are listened to and the ones with the new, innovative ideas are ignored.
What really made this article interesting to me isn’t the business side of ‘leveraging technology’, ‘shifting the paradigm’, ‘thinking outside the box’ or whatever business buzzwords you would like to use but how this affects scientists; in particular, physicists. Many theoretical physicists make most of their breakthrough research while they are still young and have not yet become ‘experts’. They haven’t learned that what they are thinking goes against the current thinking of how things are supposed to be. Often a scientist in his/her young age will grab onto a concept and if they are talented enough or dogged enough to find an answer that explains the concept, they bring their conclusions to the scientific gatekeepers only to have their heads patted in derision and told that their answers are wrong. That is what happened to Albert Einstein when he first came up with the Theory of Relativity. Almost nobody took Einstein’s theory seriously at first and it was only after decades of research that people finally accepted his theory. In fact, you can go all through history and see when people with revolutionary ideas would bring their new ideas to the public only to have the ideas dismissed out of hand by the leading thinkers of the day: ‘The Earth is flat, anyone can see that it isn’t round’, ‘The Sun revolves around the Earth, not the other way around’, ‘Tiny microbes cannot make a human being sick, they are too small’, etc.
What happens to these revolutionary thinkers is that they are put in their place by the gatekeepers and told to stick to what we know is true. After years of learning what can and can’t be done, their internal biases stop them from coming up with new and wonderfully inventive new theories. They stop pulling apart other people’s theories and take them as gospel, they learn that what everyone knows at the moment is the truth even if the ‘truth’ is that many of the theories don’t work in every situation. The revolutionary becomes the gatekeeper, the one who tells budding scientists that their new ideas are wrong and the cycle begins again.
This is the reason why scientists come up with fantastic new ideas when they are younger and lose that ability when they get older. They learn too much and become the gatekeepers! The internal dialogue with young scientists goes from ‘why not’ to ‘so-and-so already says it can’t be done’ or ‘this theory says that can’t be done’. So instead of someone challenging the status quo and coming up with a breakthrough, scientists become cowed by their knowledge and breakthroughs are left to the younger generation.
What older scientists need to understand is that current theories are not all correct. Just because someone has ‘tested’ the theory, doesn’t mean it is proved or that it is correct. Challenge the status quo, rip into theories and find out why they do or do not work. Just because someone has travelled down that path, do not assume that they have found everything on that path to find or even if that is the correct path! We do not know everything, and even though you will hear scientists bemoan that there is very little ‘new’ left to find, there is actually more out there than current scientists could even dream of. It is up to you to go out and find that new information and when you are told that your ideas don’t fit with the current understanding of the universe or that your theory is just plain wrong, don’t give up. Look closer at your theory, breakdown your reasoning and facts and make sure that you are correct but most of all, don’t stop trying new theories! It is breakthrough theories that help human beings move ahead, not sitting on the status quo.
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