Tricks versus ideas

For my entire scientific life I have come up with new experiments by using tricks. With this I mean: reading papers and combining ideas, for example other people used behavioral test A with drug X, I did behavioral test B with drug X. Or behavioral test A with drug Y in brain region 1 to be extra special. But this is not the stuff that Nobel prizes are made of.

Because essentially these were just tricks to come up with new experiments. Today I was reading a paper and I had a glimpse of a new idea. It wasn’t very clear and I couldn’t really write it down in a comprehensible way. But I’m sure that when I think about it longer I will get at what that glimpse was about. And more importantly: it made me so enthusiastic! It was like in this little glimpse I realized what science was about; combining information and adding your own ideas in order to come up with testable hypotheses. It was awesome.

If only I could recreate what I was thinking in that short glimpsy moment.