During my commute to work I often listen to Alie Ward’s “Ologies” podcast and I recently listened to an episode where Alie interviews Professor Rebecca Lai, who beautifully articulates what a scientific mindset is and why she likes working in science. She articulated the scientific mindset and approach so well that I had to try to document her insights as best I could.
Early in the podcast, Alie asks Professor Lai why she decided to switch majors from fashion design to study biochemistry. When explaining why she switched she says she had several great mentors and one taught her how to be a scientist and that the scientific mindset is all about how you approach a scientific question.
Alie follows this up by asking Professor Lai what a scientific mindset is and Professor Lai says that a scientific mindset is thinking about what the question is and how you’re going to approach it. She also says there are multiple ways to approach it, but you can’t try too many ways at once. You must “systematically isolate one part of the question” because some scientific questions are really broad and really complex. You have to attack small chunks at a time. And that you can think of it of a network of questions and think about how you’re going to prioritize the questions, keeping in mind the amount of time, resources, and everything else you have. You can simplify the question and address one question at a time. Scientific processes do things systematically.
Alie also asked Professor what sparked this interest in lab work? Professor Lai said she likes that science is a “truth finder“. There’s always an answer. Maybe we don’t know what it is, but eventually we’ll get to a truth. She also hints that we may prove out that we just don’t have the answer right now.
Many thanks to Professor Lai for her beautiful words and to Alie Ward for continuing to create thought-invoking original content.
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