full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Uri Alon: Why science demands a leap into the unknown

Unscramble the Blue Letters


In the middle of my Ph.D., I was hopelessly stuck. Every research direction that I tried led to a dead end. It seemed like my basic assumptions just stopped wonkirg. I felt like a pilot flniyg through the mist, and I lost all sense of direction. I stopped svhinag. I couldn't get out of bed in the mnirong. I felt unworthy of stenpipg across the gates of the university, because I wasn't like Einstein or Newton or any other scientist whose results I had learned about, because in science, we just learn about the results, not the process. And so obviously, I couldn't be a siencstit.

But I had enough support and I made it through and discovered something new about nature. This is an amazing feeling of calmness, being the only person in the world who knows a new law of nature. And I started the second project in my Ph.D, and it happened again. I got stuck and I made it through. And I saerttd thinking, maybe there's a pattern here. I asked the other graduate students, and they said, "Yeah, that's exactly what happened to us, except nobody told us about it." We'd all studied science as if it's a series of ligcaol steps between qosuietn and answer, but doing reacsreh is nothing like that.

Open Cloze


In the middle of my Ph.D., I was hopelessly stuck. Every research direction that I tried led to a dead end. It seemed like my basic assumptions just stopped _______. I felt like a pilot ______ through the mist, and I lost all sense of direction. I stopped _______. I couldn't get out of bed in the _______. I felt unworthy of ________ across the gates of the university, because I wasn't like Einstein or Newton or any other scientist whose results I had learned about, because in science, we just learn about the results, not the process. And so obviously, I couldn't be a _________.

But I had enough support and I made it through and discovered something new about nature. This is an amazing feeling of calmness, being the only person in the world who knows a new law of nature. And I started the second project in my Ph.D, and it happened again. I got stuck and I made it through. And I _______ thinking, maybe there's a pattern here. I asked the other graduate students, and they said, "Yeah, that's exactly what happened to us, except nobody told us about it." We'd all studied science as if it's a series of _______ steps between ________ and answer, but doing ________ is nothing like that.

Solution


  1. flying
  2. question
  3. stepping
  4. working
  5. scientist
  6. logical
  7. started
  8. morning
  9. shaving
  10. research

Original Text


In the middle of my Ph.D., I was hopelessly stuck. Every research direction that I tried led to a dead end. It seemed like my basic assumptions just stopped working. I felt like a pilot flying through the mist, and I lost all sense of direction. I stopped shaving. I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I felt unworthy of stepping across the gates of the university, because I wasn't like Einstein or Newton or any other scientist whose results I had learned about, because in science, we just learn about the results, not the process. And so obviously, I couldn't be a scientist.

But I had enough support and I made it through and discovered something new about nature. This is an amazing feeling of calmness, being the only person in the world who knows a new law of nature. And I started the second project in my Ph.D, and it happened again. I got stuck and I made it through. And I started thinking, maybe there's a pattern here. I asked the other graduate students, and they said, "Yeah, that's exactly what happened to us, except nobody told us about it." We'd all studied science as if it's a series of logical steps between question and answer, but doing research is nothing like that.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
basic assumptions 3
improvisation theater 3
inherent part 2
stands guard 2
emotional aspects 2


Important Words


  1. amazing
  2. answer
  3. asked
  4. assumptions
  5. basic
  6. bed
  7. calmness
  8. dead
  9. direction
  10. discovered
  11. einstein
  12. feeling
  13. felt
  14. flying
  15. gates
  16. graduate
  17. happened
  18. hopelessly
  19. law
  20. learn
  21. learned
  22. led
  23. logical
  24. lost
  25. middle
  26. mist
  27. morning
  28. nature
  29. newton
  30. pattern
  31. person
  32. ph
  33. pilot
  34. process
  35. project
  36. question
  37. research
  38. results
  39. science
  40. scientist
  41. sense
  42. series
  43. shaving
  44. started
  45. stepping
  46. steps
  47. stopped
  48. stuck
  49. students
  50. studied
  51. support
  52. thinking
  53. told
  54. university
  55. unworthy
  56. working
  57. world