Hit a glitch in your research? Some ‘night science​​​​​​​’ thinking could move it forward

The French biologist and Nobel prizewinner François Jacob talked about day and night science as part of the creative process that underpins research. The former, he argued in his 1988 autobiography, is a “cold, orderly logic” leading to a conclusion of the kind that gets covered in seminars and papers. Night science, in contrast, is a “stumbling, wandering exploration of the natural world.​​​​​​​”

In the first episode of a six-part series about creativity in science, Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher describe how they apply the day/night science concept in their own research and collaborations. Yanai, who studies gene regulation and cellular plasticity at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, recalls telling his lab colleagues to change tack when they get stuck: “We need to snap out of this. We need to zoom out. We need to pop out into the world of night science, into the world of ideas, where we’re going to have to use abstract thinking. We’re going to use every trick we got, And that’s going to give us the way forward.”

Yanai and Lercher, a computational cell biologist at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, co-host the Night Science podcast and run workshops outlining the tools required to make science more creative alongside the “executive” process such as running experiments, applying for grants and writing papers.

The two compare performers that pivot between musical genres (Bob Dylan from folk to rock, for example, and Beyoncé from R&B to country) to scientists who change disciplines, bringing the fresh thinking of a “beginner’s mind” to a particular challenge. “You hold no allegiance, no loyalty to any particular idea. Everything is on the table,” concludes Yanai.

Future episodes will explore different approaches to cultivating creativity in science.

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