Highlights After a turbulent period, Shi Yigong, who caught up with the business fever and study abroad fever in the 80s on the road to growth, began to reflect on his "road to success" when he was shining in the scientific community. He began to pursue more challenging academic topics; gave up tenure in the United States and chose to return to Tsinghua to teach; After being promoted to vice president of Tsinghua, he founded Westlake University from scratch... Behind his unexpected choices again and again, what kind of cognition and thinking about life and science? Perhaps his mental journey can help children face challenges and achieve better academic achievement.
In April 2023, Shi Yigong, president of Westlake University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published his first work "Self-Breakthrough".
This book gathers more than 50 articles by Shi Yigong, detailing his growth, study, and scientific research experience, as well as his thoughts on education, talent, and scientific system. From this book, we can see the mental journey of a top scientist.
Source: CITIC Press
As the book's afterword says, one of the main motivations for publishing a collection of works is to let everyone "know the real Shi Yigong."
The following is a part of the book, Shi Yigong uses his personal experience and understanding of studying in the United States to explain his views on academic ethics, academic path, and academic taste to young people who are just entering the scientific research path.
The effort of time is a must
One thing that all successful scientists have in common is that they have to put in a lot of time and effort. In fact, no matter what kind of profession a person is engaged in, in order to become the best in the industry, he must pay more time and effort than ordinary people.
Sometimes, when answering questions from students or the media, individual outstanding scientists lightly say that their success depends on luck, not hard work, and this kind of polite answer avoids the important and only emphasizes the accidental factors in the success process, which often causes great misleading to young students.
Some naïve students will even start to be opportunistic and not go all out, but wait for the so-called luck. To put it at the extreme, if there is such a scientist who succeeds primarily by luck rather than time, then his success is likely to be stealing the work of others, and nine times out of ten he does not have the academic level to be truly ahead in his field.
Neurobiologist Mr. Muming Pu has made important contributions in several fields of neuroscience.
More than a decade ago, Mr. Pu, who was at the University of California, Berkeley, once had an email that was widely circulated on the Internet, which was written by Mr. Pu to all doctoral students and postdocs in his laboratory, and one of the paragraphs was translated as follows:
"I think the most important thing is the working time in the lab, and the average successful young scientist today devotes about 60 hours a week to research in the lab... I recommend that everyone spend at least 6 hours a day on intense experimental operations and more than 2 hours of reading directly related to scientific research. The reading of literature and books should take place outside of these working hours. ”
This email is written with great seriousness and good intentions. Whether at Princeton University or Tsinghua University, I relayed the contents of this email to all the students and staff in the lab for reflection and experience.
Since I was a child, I have been very playful and do not like to learn. But the teachings from school and my parents forced me to study as hard as possible, so I was sent to Tsinghua. After tasting the sweetness, I mechanically maintained the tradition of hard work at the college level, and graduated first in my class overall, graduating a year early. Of course, the result of this test-taking education is that I rarely really think independently and have no interest in majors.
After graduating from university, I went to study in the United States. In my first year of doctoral study, because I had no interest in scientific research and majors, I was impetuous and confused, and I couldn't continue to work hard, but spent a lot of time working in Chinese restaurants and taking computer courses.
In the second year, I began to gradually adapt to the "boring" of scientific research, became a little interested in scientific research, and began to have a little bit of my own experience, sometimes after understanding some subtleties, I would proudly have the idea of "it was just that", and I had a little confidence in my scientific research ability. At this time, I had completed all the courses required for my doctorate, and I did experiments from 9 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m., five days a week, and half-day experiments on weekends.
By the third year, I had begun to understand the logic and mystery of scientific research, and I was a little eager to try, often asking questions at group meetings, and this feeling of "getting started" made me more interested in doing research, and often worked until 11 o'clock in the evening. In 1993, I motivated myself by marking "This is my 21st consecutive day in the lab" next to the date in the experiment notebook.
By the fourth year, I was fully accustomed to the scientific environment of the laboratory, and I would no longer feel bored, and the schedule was completely subordinate to the needs of the experiment. In fact, I worked much more during this period than when I first entered the lab, but I didn't feel hard. Later in my Ph.D. career, I became famous for my hard work in the lab.
As a postdoc in New York, I spent the hardest two years of my life, doing experiments every day until about 3 a.m., and often after 4 a.m. when I returned to my apartment to lie down and sleep. But I wake up every morning at 8 a.m. to the noise of cars on the street outside my window, and around 9 a.m. I return to the lab to start my day. Three meals a day are in the lab, at 9 a.m., 3 p.m., and 9 p.m. This rhythm lasts 11 days, from Monday to Friday, Friday night back to Baltimore by Greyhound coach, and nearly ten hours of sleep every day for two days on weekends, making up for the severe lack of sleep over the past 11 days. Monday morning begins the next 11-day struggle.
Although it is very difficult, I am very proud in my heart, and I know that I am creating the future with actions and working hard to start a business. Sometimes I encourage myself in my journal. I live near the intersection of 65th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, close to New York's famous Central Park, where there are often cultural and recreational activities. But in two full years in New York, I never made a step into Central Park.
I often tell my lab students about this experience, and new students often ask me, "Teacher, do you feel miserable?" I replied, "It's only bitter when I'm not interested." After being interested, I don't feel bitter at all. ”
A wonderful experiment brought me much more enjoyment than watching an American blockbuster. Looking back now, I still feel proud and excited! My seven and a half years of hard work during my doctoral and postdoctoral studies laid a solid foundation for the success of my independent research career.
Must have critical thinking
In order to make breakthroughs and succeed in scientific research, it is not enough to put in time and hard work. Critical analysis is a must possession.
The biggest difference between graduate students and undergraduate students is: undergraduate students mainly learn the knowledge accumulated by human beings for a long time, taking into account scientific research and skill training; The essence of graduate students is to discover and create new knowledge through scientific research, and the exploration of new knowledge must rely on the logic of critical thinking.
In fact, an important part of education throughout the university and graduate level is to develop the ability to analyze critically and master methods that enable innovative research. There are many examples here, and the coverage is very wide, and there are a few examples that I will never forget.
1. Correct analysis of negative outcomes is the key to success
As a doctoral student, if each experiment is successful and the expected results are obtained, except for individual research fields, it may generally only take 6~24 months to obtain all the results required for a doctoral degree.
However, in the United States, it takes an average of about 6 years for doctoral students in life sciences to earn a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) degree. This analysis shows that the vast majority of experimental results will be different from expectations, or negative. Many junior PhD students are frustrated when they see negative results, and are even reluctant to carefully analyze the causes.
In fact, the analysis of negative outcomes is one of the most direct ways to develop critical thinking. As long as there are suitable controlled experiments, negative experimental results that are correct are often the only way to success.
Generally speaking, each step of any exploratory research topic has several or even a dozen possible paths, and the process of progress is the process of eliminating the incorrect direction and finding the right direction, and in many cases, it is to try and eliminate these several or even a dozen possible ways one by one until a feasible path is found. In the process, a credible negative outcome can often lead us to abandon the current path with confidence. If used properly, this exclusion method will ensure that we end up on the right experimental path.
Unfortunately, the negative results of most students are unreliable and do not stand up to logical scrutiny. This is often the biggest obstacle to the progress of scientific research projects.
For example, the control experiment has no expected results, or lacks corresponding control experiments, or makes mistakes in the analysis and judgment of experimental results, resulting in "negative results" or "uncertain" conclusions, which is very harmful to the progress of the entire topic, and often makes students overwhelmed and distressed in future experiments.
Therefore, I admonish and encourage all my students: as long as you continue to achieve credible negative results, your topic will soon be on track; In the process of constantly analyzing negative results, the strong critical analysis skills you develop will make you mature quickly and gradually grow into a good scientist.
I'm always worried about students who are smooth sailing and rarely achieve negative results because they haven't really been trained in critical thinking in research.
In my lab, there are occasionally students who get the results they need to write their doctoral dissertations in a short period of time (less than two years, sometimes even a year). To these students, I will definitely keep them on a challenging new topic and put them through negative outcomes. Without these trials, it is difficult for them not only to truly develop critical thinking, but also to become good scientists who can lead a laboratory independently.
2. Time-consuming perfectionism hinders innovation
Nikolai Pavalatitić was my postdoctoral supervisor and had a great influence on me, he did a series of landmark research work, he was recognized in the world structural biology community, and he was promoted to full professor at the age of 31.
In April 1996, shortly after I arrived in Nikolai's laboratory, I purified a fairly high expression protein, Smad4, and after two days, although the protein was purified, the results were very unsatisfactory, and the yield was only about 20% of the expected. Seeing Nicola, I was embarrassed to say: "The yield is very low, and I plan to continue to optimize the purification method of protein to increase the yield." ”
He asked me, "Why do you want to increase your productivity?" Is there not enough protein for you to do preliminary crystallization experiments? I replied, "Although I have enough protein for crystallization screening, I need to optimize the yield to get more protein." ”
He interrupted me unceremoniously: "That's not right. The yield is high enough, and your time is more important than the yield. Please start crystallization screening as soon as possible. "Practice has proven the value of Nikolai's advice. I performed crystallization experiments with only a few milligrams of protein and quickly realized that the biochemical properties of this protein solution were not ideal and were not suitable for crystallization. After I removed dozens of amino acids with flexible N-terminal through genetic engineering, the protein not only had high expression, but also stable biochemical properties, and soon obtained crystals with diffraction ability.
In the early stage of the bold innovation experiment, of course, the design of each step of the experiment should be as careful as possible, but once the plan starts, the experimental results of the intermediate steps do not have to pursue perfection, but should be pushed step by step to the end of the experiment to see if the overall result can be roughly in line with the hypothesis.
If it generally agrees, you should go back and carefully refine the experimental design at each step. If the general agreement does not match, and the overall experimental design and operation are not wrong, then your assumption is likely to be very problematic. Such a methodology from critical thinking is used in every day of experimentation.
For the past 20 years, I have been telling all the students in the lab that perfectionism should not be pursued. I push this methodology to the limit: as long as an experiment can go forward, it must reach the end, try to see the results of each step, and then solve the problems encountered one by one when you need to look back.
3. The trade-off between literature and seminars
During my doctoral student years, my supervisor, Jeremy Berg, attached great importance to the reading of relevant scientific literature, and would arrange weekly laboratory group meetings to discuss important scientific research progress and research methods. As a student, I benefited a lot, and I always thought that all scientists need to be knowledgeable at any time.
Entering the postdoctoral stage, just arrived in Nikolai's laboratory, I tried to show my ability to read literature, and also wanted to discuss with Nikolai to get his true biography.
One day in the spring of 1996, I was reading an article published in the journal Nature and met Nikolai before lunch, describing to him the subtlety of the article and looking forward to his commentary.
Nikolai said to me with an embarrassed face: "Sorry, I haven't read this article yet. "I thought maybe the article was too new and he hadn't had time to read it. A few days later, I read an article published in Science a few months ago, and I went to Nikolai to discuss it, but he said that he hadn't read it. After hitting a wall a few times, I asked him puzzled: "You are so knowledgeable, you must have read a lot of literature." Why didn't I read the papers I mentioned? ”
Nikolai looked at me and said, "I don't read extensively. I asked, "If you don't read widely, how can your research do so well?" How can you cite so much literature in your paper? He surprised me with his answer, to the effect that he only reads papers that are directly related to his research interests, and only reads a lot when he writes papers.
My postdoc at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute has a wonderful series of academic lectures, often inviting famous scientists in the life sciences field to give lectures.
Once, a Nobel laureate came here as a guest and asked to talk to Nikolai by name. For most people, this is a valuable opportunity to get close to big people and make a good impression. However, Nicolas told his secretary: "Please convey my apologies for me, I have arranged for the day of the lecture." "We all feel sorry for Nikolai.
What made me even more unexpected was that on the day the Nobel Prize winner gave the lecture, Nikolai locked himself in his office and did not go out from the morning until the evening, and of course did not go to the lecture. From what we know about him, nine times out of ten, he's writing papers or analyzing structures. Later I realized that Nikolai often did.
Before I left Nikolai's laboratory, I asked Nikolai, with a mystery that had never been fully solved: "If you don't read much literature and don't listen to lectures, how can you still be such a good scientist?" ”
He replied: "I have limited time, only about 10 hours a day in the lab. After weighing the pros and cons, I can only spend my limited time on what I think is most important, such as analyzing the structure, analyzing the structure, discussing topics with students, and writing articles. If I don't have enough time, I can only read fewer articles and listen to fewer lectures. ”
Nikolai's answer expresses a simple truth: a person must make a choice about what he does, and it is impossible to do everything. Whether it is reading scientific research literature or listening to academic lectures, it is to learn from relevant experience and better serve their own scientific research topics.
In the doctoral level, especially in the first two years, I think it is necessary to spend enough time listening to academic lectures in various related fields, and to read scientific literature extensively to lay a good foundation for critical thinking. However, with the deepening of scientific research topics, the choice of literature reading and academic lectures needs to be targeted, and it is necessary to start weighing the allocation of time.
4. Challenge conventional thinking
From the beginning of my understanding, I have been taught that all failures have hidden truths, and that I should find the reason for my failure and try again. Until 1996, I experimentally followed this principle. But in Nikolai's laboratory, this basic principle was also justifiably challenged.
Once, a more complex experiment failed. I was frustrated and prepared to spend a few more days doing more controlled experiments to find the problem. Unexpectedly, Nikolai stopped me, and he frowned and asked me: "Tell me, why did you understand why the experiment failed?" ”
I thought the question was too unreasonable, so I replied with a straight face: "I have to analyze what is wrong to ensure that the next time will be successful." Nikolai immediately commented: "No need. What you really have to do is repeat the experiment, and hopefully next time. Instead of spending a lot of time figuring out why an experiment failed, repeat it first. The best way to deal with a complex experiment that has failed is to seriously redo it. ”
Later, Nikolai took his view to the idea that it was a philosophical decision to find out why the experiment failed. Finding the cause of every imperfect experimental result is not necessarily the best practice. If you think about it, these words make a lot of sense.
Not all failed experiments must find their cause, especially life science experiments, the process is cumbersome and complicated, and most failed experiments are caused by simple operation errors. For example, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) forgot to add a certain ingredient, you can carefully redo it, which often solves the problem. Only critical experiments that cannot move forward without finding the cause of failure need to be thoroughly examined.
The examples I chose are somewhat "extreme", but only in this way can they better shock everyone's thinking.
In fact, in my own lab, I have already told all the students many times about these examples, and after each lecture, I will tell everyone to break the superstition and doubt, and the key is: follow the logic! I repeat this phrase several times a day in the lab to different students. Rigorous logic is fundamental to critical thinking.
Scientists often need independent personalities
And a little temper
For people in society, scientific research is a chore; For real scientists, scientific research is heart-wrenching, thoughtless, and lovely, which is wonderful.
It is not feasible to rely on the persuasion and preaching of others to engage in scientific research, and it is possible to become a first-class scientist only by truly being interested in one's heart to fascinating, and single-mindedly and persistently exploring and solving puzzles.
As the saying goes, "no madness, no life". In this process, independent personality and temper are particularly important. The so-called independent personality is to have its own independent view of things in the world. It is precisely some people with tempers who will not easily follow the flow and can maintain their independent personality.
This is a book about growth, study, education, family, friendship, ideals, not only for themselves, but also for education and research workers, but also for young students, on the road of pursuing ideals without stopping, moving forward together.
This article is excerpted from "Self-Breakthrough: Moving Towards Ideals", by Shi Yigong, CITIC Publishing Group and Elephant Press, April 2023
"Self-Breakthrough"
Bund Education is on the shelves