Dan Ariely: Undergraduate Researcher Made Good!

I've just started reading Dan Ariely's very entertaining book about behavioural economics, Predictably Irrational. In his introduction, Ariely describes a class that he took as an undergraduate at Tel Aviv university which, in his words, 'profoundly changed my outlook on research and largely determined my future.' The class was on brain physiology, and the lecturer was Prof. Hanan Frenk. Ariely writes that struck him most about the course was Frenk's 'attitude to questions and alternative theories.' Here's what was so distinctive:

Many times, when I raised my hand in class or stopped by his office to suggest a different interpretation of some results he had presented, he replied that my theory was indeed a possibility [...] and would then challenge me to propose an empirical test to distinguish it from the conventional theory (p. xi).

During the semester, Prof. Frenk gave his student the resources to test a theory about epilepsy on fifty rats. 'In the end,' he writes, 'it turned out that my theory was wrong, but this did not diminish my enthusiasm.' Ariely now teaches at Duke University, and his blog makes it clear that he's taken Prof. Frenk's example to heart - see this post on the launch of a series of short stories by undergraduates that illustrate principles of behavioural economics.