Want to be a good researcher? Go down rabbit holes.

There’s something scandalous about admitting some of my most valuable intellectual breakthroughs haven’t come from systematic literature reviews or carefully planned research queries. My best work comes from getting lost on Wikipedia at 2AM, following hyperlinks from medieval astronomy to Byzantine iconography to the Philosophy of mathematics until I’ve forgotten what I was searching for.

This phenomenon has a name, the [**“wiki rabbit hole”**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_rabbit_hole) or “wiki walk.” The metaphor comes from Lewis Carroll’s *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland*, where Alice follows the White Rabbit into his burrow. Like Alice’s journey, what starts as a simple query can lead to wonderlands of knowledge we never anticipated. This kind of meandering isn’t procrastination dressed up as research, rather, going down the rabbit hole reveals connections and generating insights that systematic inquiry alone can’t produce.

## Three styles of curiosity

Berkeley researchers describe [three distinct curiosity styles](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_three_styles_of_curiosity): hunters, busybodies, and dancers. * **Hunters** pursue knowledge with focus, zooming in on connected concepts and seek specific answers and follow targeted paths. This is the research method professors praise. * **Busybodies** explore loosely connected networks, collecting novel snippets about a wide range of topics and are classic rabbit hole explorers—starting with the French Revolution, ending up on competitive cheese rolling. * **Dancers** leap to new ideas and put existing ones together in novel ways, connecting distant dots to make entirely new meaning. Their style shows up as creativity and interdisciplinary thinking. [A 2024 study](https://theconversation.com/going-down-a-wikipedia-rabbit-hole-science-says-youre-one-of-these-three-types-242018) of nearly half a million Wikipedia users found that dancers briefly link disparate concepts across traditionally siloed areas. This may be the most direct path from curiosity to creativity.

## When serendipity meets sagacity

Fleming discovered penicillin. Becquerel discovered radioactivity. Both accidents, right? Not quite. Serendipity is what happens when attention, creativity, and wisdom let researchers recognize potentially valuable unexpected findings.

When Becquerel discovered radioactivity, [he combined his background in luminescence with his knowledge of X-rays](https://philarchive.org/archive/MENAPE-2) and his willingness to investigate unexpected observations. Logic and chance work together.

Wikipedia rabbit holes operate on similar principles. You can’t orchestrate serendipity, but you can create conditions favourable to it. Hyperlinks provide infrastructure. Curiosity provides momentum.