Some Thoughts on Intellectual Honesty

I'm a sucker for buying books at the airport, I think it's because so much free time beckons not only at the airport while waiting to board but then also in the airplane itself.

So I recently bought at SeaTac the book "Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know" by Adam Grant (helpfully subtitled #1New York Times Bestseller).  It's about rethinking your own assumptions which seems like a good topic to read about.

A striking passage about midway into the book I think is worth sharing here, and that is the idea that it is one thing to admit to yourself that you are wrong, but then yet another to confess that you are wrong to others which can open the door to ridicule, loss of reputation and even status in your social circle.

To which author Grant shares the following story, I quote it directly out of the book since it has quite an impact:

"In the early 1990's, the British physicist Andrew Lyne published a major discovery in the world's most prestigious science journal. He presented the first evidence that a planet could orbit a neutron star - a star which had exploded into a super nova.  Several months later, while preparing to give a presentation at an astronomy conference, he noticed that he hadn't adjusted for the fact that the Earth moves in an elliptical orbit, not a circular one.  He was embarrassingly, horribly, wrong. The planet he had discovered didn't exist.

In front of hundreds of colleagues, Andrew walked into the ballroom stage and admitted his mistake.  When he finished his confession, the room exploded in a standing ovation.  One astrophysicist called it the most honorable thing he'd ever seen."

Author Grant draws from this the point that admitting we were wrong doesn't make us look less competent, but rather it's a display of honesty and a willingness to learn.  In fact people can be judged more favorably if they acknowledge the new information or the information they have missed.

My own opinion on this is that obviously its important to be honest with yourself and with others, but it is striking to confess a mistake in front of hundreds of people.  It might have been because the erroneous work had lot of impact and was already published in a major journal that Dr. Lyne made the decision to make it widely known what had gone down. The cynic in me also says, since the elliptical nature of Earth's orbit has been known since the early 1600's, he would have gotten found out so it was pretty clear that owning up to it fast was the best route to take anyway.

Those who have worked together with me know that I've certainly had my share of research washouts and monster mistakes and I've owned up to them (and also expect those working with me to do the same), but fortunately they became obvious before the official publication or presentation stage.  If any of these errors had been found out later, and most certainly if others were basing their own work or decision-making on them, I think Dr. Lyne provides a good example on how to deal with it.

Any thoughts?

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