Cognitive Biases for Scientists (in progress)

We all suffer with Cognitive Biases. What is Cognitive Bias? One typical example is how we stick to and defend an information that we received earlier in life, no matter what it may be. Therefore, we have people born in a religious environment incapable of seeing the illogicality of their faith, and under adequate provocation, also ready to kill or get killed for their faith.

Such cognitive bias can prove fatal for a scientist. A scientist is in search of truth. Cognitive biases will make them fool themselves into believing something that is actually not true. But nature cannot be fooled, and the said scientist would waste all of their exsistence because of cognitive biases. We want to avoid that.

Why is Cognitive Biases a matter for absolute concern for a scientist, more so than a common person. I mean, the opposite can be argued. Science is a deductive discipline, a logical framework with rigour and objectivity? What room for subjectivity and let alone a Cognitive Bias is for a scientist? A scientist should be least worried about cognitive biases than common people!

If only this picture I have painted was true. The argument can be summarized in a single quote.

“It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.”

― Henri Poincaré

And when intuition is at play, congnitive biases follow. Hence the necessity to guard oneself from being fooled by one's own mind. Because, as Feynman said, "you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.".

Before we dive into a list of cognitive biases, it is important to note that there does not exist an exhaustive list of cogitive biases, in the same way as there does not exist an exhaustive list of nutritients required for a human being. Scientists know about a certain number of nutrients, but they might not know about many other ones. Moreover, we as human beings are not static machines. We are evolving. We do not have a strict list of prescriptions of nutrients. The body dynamically reacts to chemicals that it is exposed to, and this reaction also evolves through time.

What I am trying to say that, be watchful for cognitive lapses that perhaps nobody has heard of. How will you do that. Stay intellectually honest. Don't fool your own self.