In science, intellect and intelligence are valued above all else. Scientists spend years in graduate programmes, studying, teaching and researching, to become experts in their fields. Having invested so many years in developing our expertise, we naturally assume that it is the main thing that we can offer the world. Some assume that where we lack expertise, we cannot add any value.

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The structure and culture of research tends to reinforce this idea. In papers, scientists reference only the leading experts. It is next to impossible for someone who is not recognized to get funding — no matter how good their grant application. Fear of failure causes many of us to avoid environments in which we are not experts. There may be no such thing as a stupid question in primary school, but in graduate school one can be made to feel quite uneasy about asking a basic question.

Ironically, always playing the expert can be limiting, in terms of both contributions to science and career options. Sometimes, playing the dummy can be liberating and help to reveal opportunities that would otherwise have been overlooked. Dummies ask questions that experts assume were answered long ago. Dummies explore subject areas in which they lack knowledge. Dummies listen more and talk less.

Becoming a dummy frees you from dogma. Developing expertise can often mean ingesting unquestioned assumptions and accepted facts. Such received beliefs can lead to unchallenged group decision-making and prevent a community from recognizing a path-breaking discovery — especially when it comes from someone outside the discipline.

In fact, many exciting scientific discoveries have arisen from a non-expert asking a basic question — consider, for example, the connection between the extinction of the dinosaurs and a meteorite impact, which was the brainchild of an experimental physicist, not a palaeontologist. Not coincidentally, experts in a field often meet these basic questions with a fair degree of hostility.

Embracing your inner dummy is also a powerful tool for communicating science. Many scientists assume that public hostility toward science stems from ignorance of the facts, and that science education is the remedy. But perhaps the answer is also more human engagement by scientists; sometimes they need to step out of the role of expert and seek to understand the audience's cultural and ethical perspectives.

Scientists' preoccupation with being an expert as they consider career options can be enormously limiting. Newly minted PhD holders can have a hard time seeing themselves as anything but researchers. The idea that they are experts in their subjects is familiar and comfortable. Less familiar is the notion that the transferable skills they have developed — such as analysis, research and model testing — may also make them adaptable problem-solvers, able to contribute in a wide range of career environments. As a result, many PhD holders limit their ambitions to a job within their discipline.

In reality, doing original scientific research in a graduate programme can prepare you for a variety of environments and roles. The years spent developing and testing a hypothesis, coping with limited resources and learning to use an array of complicated tools for gathering and analysing scientific data are excellent preparation for being innovative, resourceful and effective wherever you work. By letting go of the need to be an expert, you can approach unfamiliar problems and recognize the underlying connections with what you have already done.