“Establishing yourself as a scientist takes an awfully long time. The riskiest part is learning what a true scientist is and then taking the first shaky steps down that path, which will become a road, which will become a highway, which will maybe someday lead you home. A true scientist doesn’t perform prescribed experiments; she develops her own and thus generates wholly new knowledge. This transition between doing what you’re told and telling yourself what to do generally occurs midway through a dissertation. In many ways, it is the most difficult and terrifying thing that a student can do, and being unable or unwilling to do it is much of what weeds people out of Ph.D. programs.” ― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
I think performing a prescribed experiment or methodology doesn't validate the notion for being a 'scientist' as long as he/she knows what they're doing. Sure a scientist needs to be creative but not all scientists are required to invent their own methodology. In fact, performing a prescribed experiment may lead to a discovery of new gap or knowledge. Understanding of and working on existing knowledge could pave a way for acquiring a new one. I believe the quality of a scientist's work should primarily be measured based on the novelty of his/her findings.
It may not be absolutely right or wrong to side with either way. However it may be said that research involves searching again. A scientist searches 'again' to provide a solution on what has been perceived as a problem. The perception may have originated from the researcher or another party. Of most important is to note that a problem that originate from the 'owner' (researcher) may have a better solution than a problem prescribed from other sources.
Dear Shujaul - the quote by Hope Jahren sounds good and is certainly tru in general. However, let me add a detail from our discipline, chemistry. We are working in the field of synthetic inorganic chemistry for more than 40 years. As chemists, our research involves the synthesis and full characterization of new chemical compounds. However, part of our normal work in the laboratory is the preparation of starting materials following procedures which have been described in the chemical literature. Thus in such cases we must repeat prescribed experiments, and there is nothing wrong about it. Once we made the starting materials we can preform novel experiments with them.
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