Repost: Cha, Cha, Cha and Grant Review

This originally went up August 13, 2007.

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Writedit notes:

Science has published an elegant posthumous article by Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. entitled The Cha-Cha-Cha Theory of Scientific Discovery … representing the 3 categories of discovery: Charge, Challenge, and Chance. In brief:
“‘Charge’ discoveries solve problems that are quite obvious … ‘Challenge’ discoveries are a response to an accumulation of facts or concepts that are unexplained by or incongruous with scientific theories of the time … ‘Chance’ discoveries are those that are often called serendipitous and which Louis Pasteur felt favored ‘the prepared mind.'”

I want to go a little beyond writedit’s point so I’ll quote more extensively from the article