In 1995, Kevin Dunbar set up a rather creative laboratory experiment. He wanted to study how scientific breakthroughs happened. Dunbar, a psychologist at McGill University, broke with the traditional methods of scientific inquiry used in psychology and opted instead to emulate the field studies of anthropology and ethnography. Instead of testing, he would use observation. He set up cameras inside four prominent microbiology laboratories in order to study when and how the scientists’ breakthrough insights occurred.
