The Invisible Curriculum of Research

Courses, textbooks, and papers provide the formal curriculum of research. But there is also an invisible curriculum. Unwritten rules and skills separate the best researchers from the rest.

I did get an early education on this thanks to my advisor, Anish. He kept mentioning "taste", calling some of my observations and algorithms "cute", and encouring me to be more curious and creative and to develop my "taste". 

Slowly, I realized that what really shapes a research career isn't written in any textbook or taught in any course. You learn it by osmosis from mentors, and through missteps: working on the wrong problem, asking shallow questions, botching a project, giving up too soon. But if you can absorb these lessons faster, you will find research more fulfilling. The visible curriculum teaches you how to build a car. The invisible curriculum teaches you where to go, who to ride with, and how to keep going when the road turns uphill.

After 25 years of experience, I can name five big items on that curriculum. And with some sleight of hand, make these into the 5Cs of the invisible curriculum: curiosity/taste, clarity/questions, craft, community, and courage/endurance.

Curiosity/Taste

"Do only what only you can do"

-- Dijkstra's advice to a promising researcher, who asked how to select a topic for research

Most problems are not worth solving. They may be technically tricky but irrelevant, or they may be easy and uninteresting. Developing taste means knowing which questions combine depth, tractability, and importance.

I believe curiosity and taste have an innate part: you can't replicate the twinkle in Gouda's eye when he is onto an interesting research problem. But they can also be cultivated. You build them by reading broadly, revisiting classic papers, and asking senior researchers not just what was done, but why it mattered at the time. Over the years, I have seen researchers chase technically impressive but tasteless problems that led nowhere. The best researchers have a finely tuned compass that points toward ideas with lasting value.

Clarity/Questions

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. For once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes. 

--A. Einstein

The best researchers are the best question-askers. Any good researcher can solve the problems handed to them. The real skill is asking sharper, deeper questions that reframe an area and make others stop and think, "Yes, that's the question we should be asking".

Good questions are uncomfortable: they expose blind spots, disrupt comfortable assumptions, and make traditionalists nervous. They are generative and open new directions. If you want to stand out, learn to ask better questions.

Craft

Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.

-- Leonardo da Vinci

Research ideas live or die by execution. I have seen brilliant insights fail because the paper was unreadable, the system was sloppy, or the evaluation was unconvincing. Craft is about how you write papers, present talks, code systems, or design experiments. Craft matters as much as the idea itself.

Craft looks boring from the outside: rewriting a paragraph five times, running experiments three different ways, making your figures clean and interpretable. But craft is what makes an idea visible, persuasive, and reproducible. Without it, your work never takes off.

Community

"None of us is as smart as all of us."

-- Ken Blanchard

Research happens in conversation, not isolation. Community is how you learn taste. Whom you share ideas with, who critiques your drafts, who cites you ... all of this shapes your trajectory. Invest in your community: mentor, review, collaborate, and give credit generously. Your reputation compounds faster, and lasts longer, than your h-index.

People skills are very important. There is nothing soft about these skills, these are the hardest skills to master and the most crucial for success. Learn to communicate well. Spend many times more effort than you think sufficient to improve your writing and presentation. Not a second of this work goes to waste. Really, just read through the Writing/Presenting section here.

Finally, maintain high standards. Your name is your currency. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose.

Courage/Endurance

"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."

-- Albert Szent-Györgyi (Nobel laureate)

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; genius will not; education will not; persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

-- Calvin Coolidge

Community is important but that doesn't mean you flock like sheep. Incremental work is safe but forgettable. Transformative work requires courage to risk failure, and endurance to push through rejection. Every meaningful project will face resistance: reviewers who don't get it, experiments that collapse, colleagues who tell you it won't work.

Steven Pressfield calls it "turning pro": showing up day after day, even when enthusiasm wanes. The invisible curriculum here is that breakthroughs often come not from brilliance, but from stubborn persistence. The courage to start and the endurance to continue... That is what carries you across the long, dull middle of any project.

If you are looking for more to read, here is more advice:

https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2024/07/advice-to-young.html

https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2020/06/research-writing-and-career-advice.html