A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes

The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

You’ll get results, Inspector, by always putting yourself in the other fellow’s place, and thinking what you would do yourself. It takes some imagination, but it pays. (Holmes; The Retired Colourman)

More information isn’t necessarily better information but it may falsely increase our confidence - What is not worth knowing is not worth knowing A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can. (Montaigne)

Assume a crime has taken place and we are faced with the problem of how the criminal escaped from a locked room. Sometimes we need to think the other way around. The question is not how the criminal escaped but how he got into the room in the first place. Sometimes one problem solves the other. Test Our Theory- if it disagrees with the facts it is

To choose a road, to stop habitually and to ask whether you have not gone astray, that is the true method.

The essential factor in this method consists in working back from observations of conditions to the causes which brought them about. It is often a question of deciding the doings of yesterday by the records found to-day.

Distance gives perspective - Sometimes we need to remove ourselves from the problem and get a fresh perspective

When an event differs from what Holmes expect, it draws his attention - What is out of the ordinary or atypical? The absence of something we expect to see or happen is information and a clue in itself

He [Doyle] created a shrewd, quick-sighted, inquisitive man...with plenty of spare time, a retentive memory, and perhaps with the best gift of all - the power of unloading the mind of all burden of trying to remember unnecessary details.

We need to both observe the big picture - forest - and the details - trees - Sometimes the trivial or the most immaterial aspect of a case may be the most important but we need to learn how to separate between trifles that matter and those that don’t