Einstellung effect

There is a well known bias related to this called the Einstellung effect, a psychological phenomenon characterized by a fixation on the first solution to a problem discovered at the expense of being able to find potentially better solutions. 

This is aggravated by multitasking. William Dershowitz on Multitasking:

“Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.

I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing

The Shirky Principle

 “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution” – Clay Shirky

This is also known as Regulatory Capture

“When a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.”

Observation in Science

The scientific method requires observations of natural phenomena to formulate and test hypothesesIt consists of the following steps:[

  1. Ask a question about a natural phenomenon
  2. Make observations of the phenomenon
  3. Form a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon
  4. Predict logical, observable consequences of the hypothesis that have not yet been investigated
  5. Test the hypothesis’ predictions by an experimentobservational studyfield study, or simulation
  6. Draw a conclusion from data gathered in the experiment, or revise the hypothesis or form a new one and repeat the process
  7. Write a descriptive method of observation and the results or conclusions reached
  8. Have peers with experience researching the same phenomenon evaluate the results

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observation