Professor Antonio Giordano Launches “Medicine – Highlights” for Il Mattino

Professor Antonio Giordano now contributes a dedicated column titled “Medicine – Highlights” to Il Mattino, one of Italy’s most esteemed and widely circulated daily newspapers, long-established as a cornerstone of Southern Italian journalism.

This column will appear every Sunday in both print and digital formats. It serves as an insightful space for in-depth research with Professor Giordano, extending beyond the frontiers of medicine to the profound significance of human well-being.

In an era where scientific breakthroughs are revolutionizing how we heal and care for mind and body, the column aims to orient readers amid these transformations.

Below follows the content of the article as published in the Italian edition of Il Mattino.

When the Unexpected Guides Research

It might seem counterintuitive, but those who claim that authentic discovery stems from the unexpected speak the truth. As highlighted in a recent editorial published in Nature Biotechnology, the essence of research lies in its evolutionary and unpredictable nature, and it is openness of mind that makes it possible.

Funding agencies and academic institutions require researchers to design linear and rigorous paths that should guide projects for years. But the reality of research is very different: it consists of deviations, false starts, unexpected insights, and new questions that arise along the way. In practice, scientific progress rarely follows the initial plan. The most significant moments often arise from unexpected results, changes in direction, or encounters with new ideas.

The evolutionary metaphor helps understand how a research project truly develops: variations (new hypotheses, tools, approaches) represent the raw material; the scientific team, like natural selection, decides which ones to pursue. It is a dynamic balance between creative improvisation and methodical planning. In so-called “night science,” ideas are generated, while in “day science,” they are rigorously tested.

However, all this remains hidden in the final form of a scientific publication. The article, in fact, does not tell the complete story of the project but presents only the winning trajectory, the one that led to publishable results: a narrative constructed posteriori, orderly, coherent, and often illusory. The importance of openness to experience.

Among the personality traits studied by psychologists, it is precisely “openness” (which includes curiosity, mental flexibility, and the ability to imagine alternative scenarios) that has the strongest correlation with creativity. And it is also the most essential trait in research. Being open means not only welcoming new ideas but also knowing how to ask questions like “How can this insight contribute to my project?”

Openness is also a practice.

It can be cultivated, nourished by confrontation with colleagues, interdisciplinary exchange, and willingness to question what one thought one knew. Like in the fairy tale of Stone Soup, the project grows thanks to the contribution of many: one brings an idea, another a tool, yet another a different perspective. The researcher’s role is that of the guide, who collects, selects, and harmonizes inputs, deciding which directions to follow and which not.

Balance Between Chaos and Control

Managing a scientific project requires balance. Too much rigidity stifles it, too much freedom disorients it. The most difficult and fascinating task for those who do research is precisely this: finding the right tension between planning and openness, between discipline and intuition.

In the end, as Eisenhower said, “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

The true guide to discovery is not the plan, but the attitude. It is mental, intellectual, human openness that makes the difference between those who simply conduct an experiment and those who truly contribute to the advancement of knowledge.

Credits: This article was originally written in Italian for ilmattino.it​