Intelligence

In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of progress in the understanding of human intelligence. Anecdotally, pre-meds often have high crystallized intelligence (intelligence related to prior knowledge and experience). Students planning to go to graduate school seem to have high fluid intelligence (adaptive reasoning in novel situations) like me. Conflicts arise when people with different types of intelligence try to communicate. As you can tell from the definition, fluid intelligence is critical (if not essential) in scientific research. I ask all students to learn the language of fluid intelligence in my lab. In other words, you need to conceptually understand projects in the lab.

If you rely heavily on crystallized intelligence, you will feel some discomfort in my lab. Fluid intelligence will not come to you naturally but I will ask you to keep working on it. In conceptual understanding, the learner has to do practically all the work of learning to sculpt their understanding of the world. It is a slow process with potential for misunderstanding and conflicts that could be detrimental to the success of the lab. The philosophy of the lab is written as Principles below to minimize these conflicts. If you do not agree with any of the Principles, you must let me know.