做好研究的十个简单规则

David

Ten  Simple  Rules  for  Doing  Your  Best Research, According  to  Hamming

做好研究的十个简单规则

by Thomas  C.  Erren*,  Paul  Cullen,  Michael  Erren,  Philip  E.  Bourne.

非常不错的文章

请各位坛友踊跃认领翻译。 预期奖励：＋1威望 ＋100金钱

“为何只有少数科学家对重要领域作出重要的贡献，而更多的研究者在科学的长跑路上被人遗忘了？”

数学家Hamming在1986年的“你与你的研究”中有段惊人的讲话，他提出了一个问题：科学家应该如何进行大的的项目研究？即是以“诺贝尔奖”的方式工作？他的洞察力是来源于他超过四十年在计算机科学和无线电通讯领域作为前沿先驱的研究工作。他跟其他领域的杰出人物一样具有非凡的影响力，如物理学家Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, 和 Walter Brattain, 信息理论之父Claude Shannon，还有统计学家John Tukey. Hamming表现得对不同人的做法和应当的做法非常感兴趣，总结了Hamming的讲话我们得出以下十个简单的规则，希望对你从事“一流的研究/事业”有帮助：

Rule 1: Drop Modesty
舍弃谦虚
To quote Hamming: “Say to yourself: ‘Yes, I would like to do first-class work.' Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good work. But you should say to yourself: ‘Yes, I would like to do something significant.'”

Rule 2: Prepare Your Mind
准备好你的心智
Many think that great science is the result of good luck, but luck is nothing but the marriage of opportunity and preparation. Hamming cites Pasteur's adage that “luck favours the prepared mind.”

Rule 3: Age Is Important
年轻是很重要
Einstein did things very early, and all the “quantum mechanic fellows,” as well as most mathematicians and astrophysicists, were, as Hamming notes, “disgustingly young” when they did their best work. On the other hand, in the fields of music, politics, and literature, the protagonists often produce what we consider their best work late in life.

Rule 4: Brains Are Not Enough, You Also Need Courage
光有头脑不够，你还必须具备勇气
Great scientists have more than just brainpower. To again cite Hamming: “Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important things, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to. Great scientists will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to think.”

Rule 5: Make the Best of Your Working Conditions
制造最好的工作条件
To paraphrase Hamming, what most people think are the best working conditions clearly are not, because people are often most productive when working conditions are bad. One of the better times of the Cambridge Physical Laboratories was when they worked practically in shacks—they did some of the best physics ever. By turning the problem around a bit, great scientists often transform an apparent defect into an asset. “It is a poor workman who blames his tools—the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the best answer he can.”

Rule 6: Work Hard and Effectively
努力且有效地工作
Most great scientists have tremendous drive, and most of us would be surprised how much we would know if we worked as hard as some great scientists did for many years. As Hamming says: “Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.” But, Hamming notes, hard work alone is not enough—it must be applied sensibly.

Rule 7: Believe and Doubt Your Hypothesis at the Same Time
同时相信且怀疑你的假设
Great scientists tolerate ambiguity. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. As Hamming says: “When you find apparent flaws, you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things, and keep an eye out for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them. Those are often the great scientific contributions.”

Rule 8: Work on the Important Problems in Your Field
在你的领域挑重要问题做
It is surprising but true that the average scientist spends almost all his time working on problems that he believes not to be important and not to be likely to lead to important results. By contrast, those seeking to do great work must ask: “What are the important problems of my field? What important problems am I working on?” Hamming again: “It's that simple. If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important problems. . . . I finally adopted what I called ‘Great Thoughts Time.' When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: ‘What will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it?'”

Rule 9: Be Committed to Your Problem
奋身于你的问题中去
Scientists who are not fully committed to their problem seldom produce first-class work. To a large extent, creativity comes out of the subconscious. If you are deeply immersed in and committed to a topic, day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. Hamming says it best: “So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of your attention—you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.”

Rule 10: Leave Your Door Open
允许你的办公门敞开
Keeping the door to your office closed makes you more productive in the short term. But ten years later, somehow you may not quite know what problems are worth working on, and all the hard work you do will be “sort of tangential” in importance. He (or she) who leaves the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he (or she) also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Again, Hamming deserves to be quoted verbatim: “There is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing—not much, but enough that they miss fame.”

In our view, Rule 10 may be the key to getting the best research done because it will help you to obey Rules 1–9, and, most importantly, it will foster group creativity [9]. A discussion over lunch with your colleagues is often worth much more than a trip to the library. However, when choosing your lunchmates (and, by implication, your institution), be on your toes. As Hamming says: “When you talk to other people, you want to get rid of those sound absorbers who are nice people but merely say ‘Oh yes,' and to find those who will stimulate you right back.”

David

规则1：表谦卑
引用Hamming的话：“对你自个儿说：‘是的，偶就是要做干NB的活。’” 我们的社会通常不甩那些打算做出点成绩的人，但是你就应对自己吼道：“对头，偶就是想做NB的事情。”

规则2：准备好你的心智
许多人认为牛叉的科研成就都是走了狗屎运，但这坨狗屎没什么大不了的，只是机遇与自己的充分准备的产物罢了。Hamming引用发明狂犬疫苗的巴斯德的语录“狗屎总是让有准备的人给踩了”。

规则3：年轻很重要
爱因斯坦很早就开始搞科研了，同样地，“搞量子力学的哥们儿”，大部分数学家和天体物理学家在做出NB成就时就如Hamming所提到的“年轻的吓人”。但另一方面，在音乐、政治以及文学领域就比较惨了，人若不够老是不会被老百姓接受的。

规则4：不要以为聪明就够了，没有勇气也是白搭
NB的科学家不只是脑子转得快。再次引用Hamming的语录：“一但你下狠心坚信自己可以做出NB学位的时候，你就是可以的。如果打一开始就认为自己不行，那你多半不会去做了。NB的科学家都是在不可思议的境况中前行的；他们思考，并继续思考。”

规则5：营造最爽的工作环境
解述一下Hamming这句话的意思，他所指的环境明显不是大部分人认都认为爽的工作环境，因为人们通常在不爽的工作环境下产出最多。剑桥物理实验室很多风光的成就，有些是有史以来最无敌的成就，都是在以前的破旧茅屋中做出来的。换个脑筋来看这个问题，NB的科学家通常可以化逆境为优势。“只有混得烂的工人才一直抱怨他的家伙不好使——混得好的，从来都是着眼于活儿，不管给他啥家伙都可以给出他最好的答复”。

规则6：工作不能傻努力，效率也不能忽视
许多搞科研的都很能埋头苦干，我们中的许多人也经常YY如果能够跟某某NB科学家一样的努力N多年后脑壳里会装多少搞头。引用Hamming语录：“知识跟产出的关系就像利滚利，比如俩能力一样的人，一个没日没夜抓住每一个小时学习思考的人，一辈子下来所做出的成绩肯定比另一个大得多”。但是Hamming又说了，表傻努力，要动着脑子努力。

规则7：相信你假设的同时也怀疑一下下
NB的科学家是允许模棱两可的。他们怀揣着对理论足够的信心而前行，可他们怀疑的小心眼一点没有放松，这可以帮助他们发现研究的差错和过失以进一步创造出新的可替代的理论。Hamming语录有道是：“当你发现你所搞研究的纰漏时，你最好放个心眼在上面，没事想想怎么自圆其说或者把理论修改一下来弥补这个过失。这些东西通常都是很有科学价值的。”

规则8：在你的地盘里挑重要的事做
很让人纳闷儿的是，目前很多普通科研人员花了很多时间精力在连他自己都觉得无所谓或者没什么搞头的研究上面。于此形成鲜明反差的是，那些追求高品质研究的人在干活前肯定会发出疑问：“偶的地盘里面啥玩意儿最有搞头？偶现在正在弄的东西有搞头么？”Hamming又说话了：“这个问题很简单，假如你真的想弄出点名堂，你肯定是会选择有搞头的研究。。。。。偶通常把周五午饭后的一段时间叫做‘伟大的思想交流期’，偶在那个时段里面只讨论伟大的NB的想法。比如偶会讨论‘电脑在科学研究中的影响是什么，如果要改变这些影响偶应该做点虾米？’”。

规则9：献身于你的问题
没有全身心投入到所研究问题的科学家是不可能做出最NB的学问的。很大程度上，创造性的母亲乃潜意识。如果你深陷而不能自拔于你所研究的问题，日复一日，你的潜意识就没事可作而只能搞你的研究了。Hamming说了最好的办法就是“排除你所有杂念，醉心于你所研究的问题，并且保持你潜意识对问题的极度饥渴状态以至于它不得不去思考你的问题，那么这时你大可撅着屁股睡大觉，清早起床时，潜意识已不知不觉给出问题的答案了，简单吧！”

规则10：别关你办公室的大门
老是关着你办公室的大门能使你在短时间内有较多的产出。但是十年过后，你可能补清楚什么问题是值得研究的了，而你所费尽心血所研究的问题也仅仅使与“重要性”打了个擦边球。他（她）如果敞开大门，就能够接触到各种干扰信息，或许还能不时地得到“一些关于这世界是个啥玩意儿”或“什么东西才是比较重要的”的线索。再一次郑重引用Hamming语录：“敞着门办公与最终从事有搞头的科研，这两者间存在非常高的相关关系，虽然关着门搞科研的人可能工作更努力。或许他们看起来选择了有一点偏差的问题来研究，但这已足够使他们错过成名的机会。”


在偶看来，规则10对于要做出最NB的科研来说是最重要的，因为它能帮助你也遵从规则1-9，另外，最重要的是，它还能帮你培养团队创造性。在嚼午饭时跟你同事侃上一会儿通常比你去一套图书馆还值。然而，在选择你神侃对象时你最好留个心眼儿。像Hamming说的，“当你欲与别人摆龙门阵时，尽量选择能够跟你擦出火花的人，别让那些看起来很NICE但除了‘OH,YES' 之外就不会说其他话的人加入进来”。