Night Science
Where do ideas come from? In each episode, scientists Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher explore science's creative side with a leading colleague. New episodes come out every second Monday.
Night Science
75 | Eve Marder and how Recipe Science ruins creativity
Professor Eve Marder is a pioneering neuroscientist at Brandeis University. Drawing on decades of work with a small neural circuit in lobsters, she describes how discovery often emerges from intuition, puzzlement, and the courage to follow unexpected observations. Eve highlights the central role of personal tolerance for ambiguity in shaping a scientist’s questions and methods. She discusses the fine line between idiosyncrasies and general principles, and how deep familiarity with the literature shaped her scientific intuition – something hard to replicate in today’s information-saturated world. We also discuss how reading is a prerequisite for clear writing, and how rigid publishing norms led to “recipe science”, suppressing creativity.
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