Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

by David Epstein

Psychologist Kevin Dunbar began documenting how productive labs work in the 1990s, and stumbled upon a modern version of Keplerian thinking. Faced with an unexpected finding, rather than assuming the current theory is correct and that an observation must be off, the unexpected became an opportunity to venture somewhere new—and analogies served as the wilderness guide. When Dunbar started, he simply set out to document the process of discovery in real time. He focused on molecular biology labs because they were blazing new trails, particularly in genetics and treatments for viruses, like HIV. He spent a year with four labs in the United States, playing a fly on the wall, visiting the labs every day for months, and later extended the work to more labs in the United States, Canada, and Italy. He became such a familiar presence that scientists called him to make sure he knew about impromptu meetings. The surface features of the labs were very different. One had dozens of members, others were small. A few were all men, one was all women. All had international reputations. The weekly lab meetings made the most interesting viewing. Once a week, the entire team came together—lab director, grad students, postdoctoral fellows, technicians—to discuss some challenge a lab member was facing. The meetings were nothing like the heads-down, solitary work in stereotypical portrayals of scientists, huddled over their test tubes. Dunbar saw free-flowing and spontaneous exchange. Ideas were b...