In previous essays, I highlighted the role that personality and serendipity has played in scientific discovery [1,2]. What’s most significant is the relationship between these variables and the population size of the investigative community. A large population of investigators will likely display more diversity of personalities and more often reap the benefits of serendipity. This explains why science functions best as a community.

Yet there are other benefits that come from a community. One such benefit is the increased likelihood of assistance . Assistance comes in many forms. If you survey PubMed for any topic, you’ll find that most studies have more than one author. This is because most research involves multiple people employing their different skills and different areas of expertise. Often times, scientists from different labs will get together and each lab typically has graduate students, post-docs, and lab assistants doing most of the actual experimentation and brainstorming (all forms of assistance). Modern scientific research often depends on sophisticated instrumentation and techniques and you will not find any one person who can master them all. Say, for example, that you devise an interesting hypothesis that can only be tested by the creation of a new transgenic mouse. To make such a mouse, you cannot simply read the materials and methods section of a study and just get to work, as the creation of such a mouse depends on significant technical skill and facilities. To create that mouse, you will need assistance. You will need someone to make it for you (and thus assistance comes in the form of collaboration or it is purchased) or you must be trained by someone else (scientists often send out their grad students or post-docs to get the training and bring it back to their lab).

Yet, when we think of the scientific method, the crucial role of assistance (like personality and serendipity) is missing. For this reason, I offer The Practice of Science (Figure 1).

As you can see from this figure, the scientific method is represented in the brown box. But I have added to the other factors (serendipity, personality, and assistance) that contribute to science. While all three factors influence all three stages of the method, I have tried to place them where they exert their maximal influence.

Serendipity primarily feeds into the observation and experimentation stage, where people stumble upon new observations or luck plays a role in either getting an experiment to work or getting a new experiment to take place.

I’ve assigned personality a role at the hypothesis and experimentation stage. A hypothesis may be born only because a certain type of personality is present to see the data in a new fashion. At the experiment stage, personality can determine whether certain experiments are actually done (or dismissed) and how the results are handled (does one change course or stay the course?).

Assistance comes into play throughout all stages. Assistance is clearly important at the experiment stage, where graduate students spend years getting experiments to work, scientists collaborate with different stages of a research program, and colleagues help trouble-shoot or interpret data. Yet assistance also receives input from personality, as someone who networks well and develops social ties can maximize the input from assistance. Assistance also feeds into serendipity, as the more people involved, the greater the odds for a lucky break. Assistance also plays a role in hypothesis stage, as students and colleagues can come up with novel ideas and suggestions. And the more people brainstorming about a potential hypothesis, the greater the likelihood someone out there might stumble upon a very relevant observation (explaining why I have assistance at the hypothesis stage feeding into serendipity at the observation stage).

Off to the right is yet one more factor that plays an important role in science – reputation. The success of the scientific method feeds into one’s reputation which, in turn, feeds back into the method by enhancing assistance. As just one example, the brightest and most highly motivated students often seek out scientists with great reputations, meaning that scientists who are held in high esteem get to pick from the cream of the crop when it comes to new minds helping them at the hypothesis and experiment stage.

Figure 1 thus demonstrates the very important role of reputation in science. If reputation is damaged or destroyed, this will negatively affect assistance and thus injure the scientific method and output. Science can still be done, but the investigative engine is running on only half of its cylinders.

Once the role of reputation is realized, the cultural dimension of science comes into play [3]. Because reputation is a social phenomenon, it is possible for reputation to be seriously damaged by socio-political factors and players, even those outside of science. The flip side is that a scientist could conceivably enhance his scientific output by plugging into some mainstream fad.

2. Neglected Elements of Scientific Discovery

3.