

The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific Research by E.W. Dijkstra - thefool
http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd06xx/EWD637.PDF

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Jakob
OCR:

The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific Research. This note is
devoted to three rules, the following of which is necessary if you want to be
successful in scientific research. (If you manage to follow them, they will
prove close to sufficient, but that is another story.) They are recorded for
the benefit of those who would like to be successful in their scientific
research, but fail to be so because, being unaware of these rules, they
violate them. In order to avoid any misunderstanding I would like to stress,
right in its first paragraph, that this note is purely pragmatic: no moral
judgements ara implied, and it is completely up to you to decide whether you
wish to regard trying to be successful in scientific research as a noble goal
in life or not. I even leave you the option of not making that decision at
all.

The first rule is an "internal" one: it has nothing to do with your relations
with others, it concerns you yourself in isolation. It is as follows:

"Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your
time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the
boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering
how that boundary should be moved forward."

This rule tells us that the obviously possible should be shunned as well as
the obviously impossible: the first would not be instructive, the second would
be hopeless, and both in their own way are barren.

The second rule is an "external" one: it deals with the relation between "the
scientific world" and "the real world". It is as follows:

"We all like our work to be socially relevant and scientifically sound. If we
can find a topic satisfying both desires, we are lucky; if the two targets are
in conflict with each other, let the requirement of scientific soundness
prevail."

The reason for this rule is obvious. If you do a piece of "perfect" work in
which no one is interested. no harm is done, on the contrary: at least
something "perfect" --be it irrelevant-- has been added to cur culture. If,
however, you offer a shaky, would-be solution to an urgent problem, you do
indeed harm to the world which, in view of the urgency of the problem, will
only be too willing to apply your ineffective remedy. It is no wonder that
charlatanry always flourishes in connection with incurable diseases. (Our
second rule is traditionally violated by the social sciences to such an extent
that one can now question if they deserve the name "sciences" at all.)

The third rule is on the scale "internal/external" somewhere in between: it
deals with the relation between you and your scientific colleagues. It is as
follows:

"Never tackle a problem of which you can be pretty sure that (now or in the
near future) it will be tackled by others who are, in relation to that
problem, at least as competent and well-equipped as you."

Again the reason is obvious. If others will come up with as good a solution as
you could obtain, the world doesn't loose a thing if you leave the problem
alone. A corollary of the third rule is that one should never compete with
one's collagues. If you are pretty sure that in a certain area you will do a
better job than anyone else, please do it in complete devotion, but, when in
doubt, abstain. The third rule ensures that your contributions --if any!--
will be unique.

* * *

I have checked the Three Golden Rules with a number of my colleagues from very
different parts of the world, living and working under very different
circumstances. They all agreed. And were not shocked either. The rules may
strike you as a bit cruel... If so, they should, for the sooner you have
discovered that the scientific world is not a soft place but --like most other
worlds, for that matter-- a fairly ruthless one, the better. My blessings are
with you.

Plataanstraat 5 5671 AL NUENEN The Netherlands prof.dr.Edsger W.Dijkstra
Burroughs Research Fellow

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asdf333
great article. thanks for sharing.

As someone more of the startup bend however, I wonder about his pursuit of
"perfect but useless" vs "imperfect but potentially useful".

He favors the former, but it seems to me that alot of companies make a big
contribution to the world by 'doing the best they can' and pushing the ball
slightly further along.

Examples: Google and Search (not 'perfect' but much better) Microsoft and OSes
(OS for the masses) Apple and iPhone

etc....

It seems like the risk of pursuing perfection is that you become paralyzed,
and the risk of doing something no one finds practical is that it contributes
nothing to the world.

Isn't it better to find a slightly more effective solution that everyone finds
they need rather than a perfect solution for a problem no one has?

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djacobs
I think his point is that good science strives toward perfection as opposed to
being manipulated and twisted to appear relevant.

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simplegeek
I'm not sure how sound rule # 3 is so can anyone please shed some light (or
offer a different perspective)? I mean all the problems that I've in my mind
right now can be tackled by people who're smarter than me (and I guess I mean
it as I do fortunately work with people way smarter than me on daily basis) so
should I abandon working on all those problems? May be I'm missing something?

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limist
I see two aspects to the 3rd rule: one, pick a problem that isn't currently
popular with most people in your field - it may be so in the future, thus you
need to think ahead, OR, you need to look at a "solved" problem that really
isn't, something from the past which you have new insights on. Avoid just
chasing the current fad(s), whether in science or business.

Two, develop skills that are unusual, relative to others in the field. For
instance, in older engineering fields (civil, mechanical, industrial), there
are many problems that could be tackled differently and/or better by someone
armed with both engineering domain knowledge, and solid coding skills. But
most engineers are terrible coders. And most coders know little about non-
electrical, non-computer engineering.

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thornad
Totaly agree with first and third one. Second one should not be a rule.

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RiderOfGiraffes
HTML:
[http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD...](http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD637.html)

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mtodd
I always spell his name Djikstra the first time 'round. :(

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shasta
He said 'loose'. huh huh

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shasta
Dijkstra slipped up and used "loose" when he meant "lose", which I found to be
humorous and a little bit jarring. That's all my above comment meant - nothing
base! Apologies if anyone read it the wrong way. Also, pull my finger.

