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Re: [Phys-L] how research is done : exploring a maze using only local information



What's wrong with being wrong? You learn from it.

Few scientists would say, "Of these possible pathways, this one is
least likely to work, but I'll take it anyway." And then waste
days/weeks/months proving that it doesn't work. Congrat's on being
right, and on wasting time and money.

You take a path that has a high probability of working. Your
hypothesis is that it will work (whether you use that term or not).
When you find that it doesn't work, you were WRONG. But you learned
that something else occurred, and that in itself may be publishable.
Politicians call it 'spin'. Publish or perish, right?

Dr. Roy Jensen
(==========)-----------------------------------------¤
Lecturer, Chemistry
W5-19, University of Alberta
780.248.1808




On Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:38:46 -0400, you wrote:

Let me make my point a bit clearer. Being wrong does not mean making a mistake necessarily. It could be that one does the correct thing given their belief system, but the result of what they does does not turn out as they expect. I suppose you could say they made a mistake, but really the mistake is in their belief of how the world works.
In that sense, when they are wrong, when they expect something that does not occur, it is an opportunity to learn. In the professional scientific world, one hopes for unexpected results since that provide the entre to new investigations. My sense of doing science is rather like a business person who does their day to day work, but are always looking for that unexpected piece that they can exploit to make more money if you are in business, or learn new things about the world if you are a scientist.

joe

Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. Ph.D.
Retired Professor of Physics
Co-Director, Northern Indiana Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Collaborative (NISMEC)
Consultant I-STEM Network
574-276-8294
inquirybellina@comcast.net




On Sep 18, 2015, at 7:37 AM, John Denker <jsd@AV8N.COM> wrote:

Without meaning to disagree with that, let me suggest
that it should be the /second/ step. There's a simpler,
less-demanding step that comes first, namely this:

In many cases, you can learn just as much without
being wrong. You can and should learn from mistakes,
but it's even better to learn without making very
many mistakes.

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