Dear all,
I try to find out whether there is general agreement on what makes a good scientist.
Looking forward to hearing your answers :-)
Rainer
What makes a good scientist?
Agreed with the points shared by Chalamala. Other attributes can include: passion & perseverance. Passion can drive the scientist forward & perseverance can make the scientist pressing on despite numerous failures.
Judging by the speedy answers and the quantity of replies, it seems far easier to say what makes good teachers and doctors than what makes good scientists.
Of course there are confounding factors that haven't been controlled for: for example, now is the main holiday period for many people on researchgate
What makes a good scientist?
Agreed with the points shared by Chalamala. Other attributes can include: passion & perseverance. Passion can drive the scientist forward & perseverance can make the scientist pressing on despite numerous failures.
What about HONEST?. l think this character is a must for a scientist, which prevents any cheating in science.I also agree with what colleagues presented above. Best regards.
Agreed Nabeel. Honesty / ethicality is an important attribute can't be ignored because lacking this e.g. can result to falsification of research or researching into weapons of mass destruction that can harm lives.
Really there is no words to say after our colleague Dr.Chalamala post, I utterly agree with almost of the above mentioned comments.
Regards, Emad
I fully agree with Chalamala. I just want to add that a researcher must be absolutely objective, that is, he must not take into account his personal feelings.
Greetings
Which makes the researcher better;
Knowledge has an end, not a means.
To love science and knowledge.
To find enough time to be alone, in order to practice the processes of remembering, imagining and contemplating.
To constantly develop analytical practice.
To learn about the philosophy of science constantly.
Dear Rainer Spiegel
Dear Colleagues With all that is said to be committed to the ethics of scientific research and has the ability to work in a team.
Regards
Houda KAWAS
Greetings,
In my view a good scientist should have to follow the scientific ethics, scientific tempor, receptive, and be able to work in a team. He should be able to analyze the data with unbiased mind
A good scientist is one who correctly applies the scientific method, shares knowledge, is modest because he is aware of what he knows and ignores. He has a passion for knowledge, he knows how to think and he builds his own conclusions from his experience, he broadly develops critical thinking. It also brings together other qualities such as humility, altruism, desire to help, delivery, leadership, ability to work as a team and assertiveness.
Dear Dr Srinivas, Dr Fung, Dr Al-Saati, Dr Hussein, Dr Cannizzaro, Dr
Dear
Dr Srinivas,
Dr Fung,
Dr Al-Saati,
Dr Hussein,
Dr Cannizzaro,
Dr عباس امير معارز الشمري,
Dr Kawas,
Dr Bisen,
Dr Platero,
Thank you so much for your contributions and for wonderfully stimulating discussion. I appreciate this a lot. Thank you also for providing references.
Best wishes and kind regards,
Rainer
Dear all,
there are very "good" answers from all of you, which will probably lighten researchers, especially ones at their starting stages like me.
But I wonder the meaning of "good" in "good scientist". If you refer to the personality properties, in my opinion, the mentioned ones are (should be) valid for all professions, not only for scientists. Because, these characteristics define you and your work, how you work in the community you engaged in, etc.
If "good" here should have a meaning more then these, a "good scientist" should be more. A scientist may be ethical, hard working, highly adaptive to team work, objective at all stages of research, freed his/her mind of boundaries, etc. but still may not reach to a level of success, may not be "good enough". For me, all properties mentioned are prerequisites (thus musts) of "being a scientist", but "a good scientist" should have a level of success in his/her research field so that his/her studies should make knowledge in that field go further, or at least played a role in this process.
To summarize, I believe that a good scientist should meet the criteria you all mentioned. Additionally, he/she should have an influence point in his/her research field, triggering the developments for the next generation of knowledge in that field.
I believe that this is the difference between a good person and a good scientist.
Regards,
Gokhan
Dear Gokhan,
thank you very much for stimulating the discussion. I appreciate this a lot and agree with almost all the points you mention.
Agreeing with the arguments of you and the other scientists (see their replies above), I think a good scientist should adhere to ethical standards, be honest, try to advance knowledge with the available resources. For me the success criterion is less relevant, because sometimes the scientist may do everything correct and yet the experiment fails. In my opinion, this scientist of course would be a good scientist, he/she would just be unlucky.
Best wishes and kind regards,
Rainer
Thank you all for contributing to this wonderful discussion.
Yours sincerely,
Rainer
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