Table 2 Rephrased questions that led to scientific breakthroughs
From: What is the question?
Lead scientist | Original question | Refocused question |
|---|---|---|
Marie Curie | Where does the “radioactivity” (a term later coined by Curie herself) come from? | How does the radioactive activity depend on the form and quantity of the uranium in a given sample? [7] |
Charles Darwin | Why do similar (though not identical) species occupy geographically related niches? | Do species split to form distinct species when they are geographically segregated and adapting to different environments? [8] |
Kurt Gödel | Can you make a complete, contradiction-free formal system of all mathematical theorems? | Can you use number theory to construct statements that are neither provable nor disprovable in such formal systems? [9] |
Barbara McClintock | How are phenotypes controlled on the molecular level? | How do genes switch on and off certain characteristics of an organism? [10] |
Francisco Mojica | Why do bacteria have CRISPR elements? | Can we learn about the function of CRISPR by looking at sequence similarities of the spacers to known sequences? [11] |