How to win a Nobel Prize

Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, has some interesting advice on his website for anyone embarking on a piece of research, which can be summarized thus:

• Listen to the Gentiles: Read outside your discipline. In his own words, ‘Pay attention to what intelligent people are saying, even if they do not have your customs or speak your analytical language.’
• Question the question: The questions asked in any academic discipline are theory laden. There is no such thing as a bare fact in any subject. Everything is affected by the presuppositions of the discipline, so Krugman rightly advocates paying critical attention to those presuppositions.
• Dare to be silly: Don’t be content with the safe and the familiar. Dare to strike out into uncharted territory. My favourite example is that of Richard Feynman: the research that led to his Nobel Prize was inspired by asking why a dinner plate thrown across a dining room at Cornell University wobbled as it flew!
• Simplify, simplify: Keep shaving with Ockham’s razor. Personally, I prefer A.N. Whitehead’s approach: ‘seek simplicity, but distrust it’. Or, to paraphrase Einstein, theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.