Rethinking Science with Alex Vawter | What If Science Is Stuck?

What if the way we were taught to understand science is limiting the way we practice it? In this episode of The Connected Experience, Greg sits down with Alex Vawter, founder of Heterodox Labs and the Heterodox Research Society, for a conversation about science, AI, experimentation, and what it means to challenge the systems that shape discovery. Alex is a Virginia Beach native whose path into science did not follow the traditional academic route. After playing baseball, moving into startup work, spending time in biology research at JMU, briefly returning to school for physics, and doing software and data analytics work for the Navy, Alex became increasingly interested in the process of science itself. His current work focuses on AI tools for wet-lab research, scientific methodology, independent science, and fringe or neglected areas of inquiry. Through Heterodox Labs, Alex is building tools for the future of research. The company’s core technology uses cameras, computer vision, sensors, and multimodal AI to observe wet-lab experiments as they happen. The goal is to create an auditable trace of the experimental process: what researchers did, what objects they interacted with, what changed in the environment, where deviations occurred, and what context may otherwise be lost. But this conversation goes beyond the technology. Alex’s broader thesis is that science may be facing more than bureaucracy. It may be facing methodological stagnation. The clean, linear version of the scientific method many people learn in school does not always reflect how discovery actually happens. Historically, science has been messier, more winding, and often shaped by people willing to ask questions outside the accepted frame. Together, Greg and Alex explore why Heterodox takes a human-centered approach to AI for science, choosing to augment researchers rather than replace them with fully automated labs. They also discuss independent science, fringe research, procedural observability, the limits of conventional institutions, and why a lab in downtown Norfolk may be the right place to rethink how science gets done. Through the lens of Meaning, Clarity, Action, and Connection, this episode asks a bigger question: How do we stay curious enough to challenge what we think we know? This is a conversation about science, but it is also about mindset, problem-solving, curiosity, and the future relationship between people, tools, and discovery.