To answer this question, we speak with Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam and Vivek Natarajan from Google DeepMind about their groundbreaking AI co-scientist project. Beyond their work at Google, Alan is an honorary lecturer in vascular surgery at Imperial College London, and Vivek teaches at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Together, we discuss how their system has evolved to mirror parts of human hypothesis generation while also diverging in fascinating ways. We talk about its internal “tournaments” of ideas, its ability to be prompted to “think out of the box,” and whether it becomes too constrained by the need to align with every published “fact”. And we discuss how we still seem far away from a time when AI can not only answer our questions, but can ask new and exciting research questions itself.

The Night Science Podcast is produced by the Night Science Institute – for more information on Night Science, visit night-science.org .

Professor Eve Marder is a pioneering neuroscientist at Brandeis University. Drawing on decades of work with a small neural circuit in lobsters, she describes how discovery often emerges from intuition, puzzlement, and the courage to follow unexpected observations. Eve highlights the central role of personal tolerance for ambiguity in shaping a scientist’s questions and methods. She discusses the fine line between idiosyncrasies and general principles, and how deep familiarity with the literature shaped her scientific intuition – something hard to replicate in today’s information-saturated world. We also discuss how reading is a prerequisite for clear writing, and how rigid publishing norms led to “recipe science”, suppressing creativity.

​​For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Martin Schwartz, a professor at Yale, is known for his work on integrins and his influential essay “The importance of stupidity in scientific research”. He emphasizes that while learning science makes you feel smart, true scientific discovery often involves feeling stupid, because it means venturing into the unknown. We discuss how the ego can obstruct creativity, and how resilience, self-discovery, and the cultivation of "passionate indifference" – being deeply engaged but unattached to outcomes – are key to sustaining a productive and fulfilling life in science.

With Ethan Mollick, professor at Wharton and author of the bestselling “Co-Intelligence”, we explore how generative AI tools like ChatGPT can enhance scientific creativity. Ethan emphasizes that AI excels at idea generation through sheer volume and recombination, outperforming most humans in many creativity tasks – though it does have odd obsessions with VR and crypto. However, AI is most effective when integrated into a collaborative human–machine workflow rather than used as a replacement. Ethan describes AI as your tireless science buddy that never gets bored or judgmental during brainstorming. We discuss how AI’s "hallucinations" can be used for creativity, how AI can bridge disciplines by revealing hidden connections across fields, and how prompting strategies – such as chain-of-thought or playful personas – can guide AI toward more original outputs. Ethan stresses the need for scientists to actively experiment with these tools, share their methods openly, and reconsider scientific workflows in light of rapid AI progress.

​​For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

David Baker, who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for designing novel proteins with AI, is a professor at the University of Washington. In this episode, he explains how he socially engineers his lab’s "communal brain", where all individuals function like neurons, densely interconnected to maximize idea generation. We explore the role of AI in science, discussing whether AI can be truly creative. Finally, we discuss the current funding crisis in science, which disproportionately affects young researchers.

For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Victor Ambros, newly awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of microRNA, is a developmental biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In this episode, we explore improvisational science – the dynamic, collaborative process where researchers build on each other’s ideas using a "yes, and…" approach. We discuss the constant need to reframe and refine scientific questions, and the challenge of helping young researchers build the confidence to question established ideas. Victor underscores the power of curiosity-driven research, emphasizing how each scientist’s unique perspective can lead to discoveries others might miss. We also examine AI’s evolving role in scientific discovery – particularly in synthesizing knowledge across disciplines – and how it can complement the cross-pollination of ideas at scientific conferences.

For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Meghan O'Rourke, acclaimed author of The Invisible Kingdom, poet, and Yale professor, joins us to explore the parallels between creative writing and scientific discovery. She describes how deep immersion in a project attracts unexpected insights, and she introduces Night Poetry and Day Poetry, inspired by our concepts of Night Science and Day Science—where night represents raw creation and day embodies refinement. We discuss how scientists and writers face similar challenges: questioning assumptions, balancing structure with spontaneity, and finding meaning in unexpected connections. Through Meghan's insights, we discover how creativity manifests similarly across disciplines, and how being an outsider can often lead to fresh perspectives.

For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Keith Yamamoto, professor and science policy leader at UCSF, discusses with us how modern science became trapped in a system that discourages creative risk-taking. Keith contrasts academia's fear of failure with Silicon Valley's acceptance of it as just another day at the office. We also talk about Keith’s introduction of a new NIH grant category specifically for paradigm-challenging ideas, where he deliberately chose generalist reviewers rather than domain experts who might reject ideas threatening their own paradigms.
For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Peter Godfrey-Smith, a Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney, explores with us the differences between creativity in science and philosophy. While philosophers speculate unconstrainedly, scientists must balance creative thinking with the need for empirical testing and within our fields’ paradigms – if you mention the “Lamarck” word at a bar full of geneticists, don’t be surprised if the piano suddenly stops and everybody looks at you in disbelief. We also talk about Thomas Kuhn’s tension between normal and revolutionary science, the risks and rewards of disruptive ideas, and the importance of "middle-class science"—independent labs driving innovation. Peter ends by drawing a parallel between the night science / day science transition and Händel's aria "As Steals the Morn," which describes the transition from dream state to wakefulness.

This episode was supported by Research Theory (researchtheory.org). For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

In this episode, Itai and Martin delve into the interplay between hypothesis-driven and exploratory research, drawing on insights from past guests of the Night Science Podcast. They discuss how being focused on a single hypothesis can prevent us from making discoveries, while emphasizing the value of open-ended exploratory analyses—often dismissed as “fishing expeditions.” The episode also examines the risks inherent to both approaches: hypothesis-driven Day Science may overlook key insights, while exploratory Night Science risks being misled by randomness.


This episode was supported by Research Theory (researchtheory.org). 
For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .