Asked about Learning taste from how good work was chosen
Pick a paper you admire. Why was it a good research bet at the time?
An answer that works
Describe what was believed before, what had changed to make it tractable, why it was a natural next step others missed, and why the answer would have been informative either way. Then say what you took from it for your own choices.
Then they push further
What would the failed version of that paper have looked like?
Say it concretely, as a result rather than as an absence: the effect was smaller than the noise, or it held only in the setting it was designed for. A bet is only good if you can describe the losing outcome and still think it was worth making.
What gets marked up
Marked up for naming a constraint that changed and roughly when. Marked down for an account that reduces to the authors being cleverer than everyone else, which is unfalsifiable and teaches nothing.
Reading an answer is not being able to give one. The section that teaches this is Learning taste from how good work was chosen, 4 hours of Research taste.
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