---
id: LIT-20250819112550
title: How To Choose a Good Scientific Problem
type: literature
created: 2025-08-19T15:25:50Z
modified: 2025-09-02T01:41:17Z
citekey: 
---

# How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem

## Authors
[[Uri Alon]]

## Notes
Uri is all about the 'nuturing lab', which means a lab's
goal is not just to advance knowledge, but to nurture future
scientists. 

He describes problems on two axes: interest and difficulty.
Interest here means how much knowledge we gain from solving
the problem. He says grad students should choose easy
problems, with ideally low interest, then postdocs move to
high interest and easy (to save time), and finally new
professors move towards the hard problems with high impact,
as they have time to do so. 

Uri also argues that taking time to find a good topic is
time well spent. It can save a lot of time down the line.

The inner and outer voices can lead to different ideas.
Outer voices are those of peers, the department, or speakers
at a conference-- but the inner voice is the more valuable
voice. That is your own voice. Uri descirbes the inner voice
is often something that needs nurtured, but can lead to
less laborious science, and more self expression.

Finally Uri talks about the schema that should be considered
during research. It is not useful to think students will go
from A->B taking the shortest path. There must be room to
wander, as that is where new problems can be best found.
This is what really lets students grow.
