Producers vs. Consumers, don’t be a consumer (UPDATED)

A colleague of mine likes to share a saying passed down from a very famous neuroscientist who used to give this advice to all his trainees. “In science there are producers and there are consumers, don’t be a consumer!” What exactly does this mean? Well, consumers are those that pour over the literature endlessly, reading voraciously and going into excruciating detail on all papers they read (obviously a caricature, but you get the point). Producers are those who know the literature but prefer to experiment, trusting their own work rather than relying too heavily on what has been shown before.

Why do I bring this up? Three major reasons, creativity and interpretations of negative data (which are linked) and time management. But before we get to those, let’s begin with a bit of an ode to consumers.