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ChemIDP.org

Failure: Why Science Is So Successful Rebroadcast

Stuart Firestein Darren Griffin

Author and Professor Professor of Genetics,
of Neuroscience, University of Kent, UK
Columbia University

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Failure
why science is so successful

Stuart Firestein
Columbia University
New York, NY
http://ignorance.biology.columbia.edu

IGNORANCE
Doubt
Uncertainty
Failure
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Ignorance
Doubt
Uncertainty
Failure
Why Science is So Successful
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How Successful ?

Acheulean hand axe : 1.7 Mya - 0.5 Mya

The Bronze Age

3300 - 1300 BCE
~ 50 generations

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How Successful ?
The Scientific Revolution
17th century - present (Galileo ~1620)
~ 10 generations

F =ma
S= k logW
e=mc2
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How Successful ?
The Scientific Revolution
17th century - present (Galileo ~1620)
~ 10 generations

F =ma
S= k logW
e=mc2
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Growth of the Scientific Literature

The ACCUMULATION model of science

2.5% yearly growth

2012: 1.57 x 106 scientific journal articles published

Is a house no more than a pile of stones?

Is science no more than a pile of facts ?
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SCIENCE
Doubt
Fact Uncertainty
Truth
Objectivity
dge
Ignorance

Failure
Knowle

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It’s very difficult to find a

black cat in a dark room.

Especially when there

is no cat

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The Scientific Method

vs.
Farting Around
...in the dark

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How much of science do you believe proceeds by

the Scientific Method?

• Zero
• About a quarter
• About half
• About three quarters
• Roughly All

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Marie Curie 1867-1934

“One never notices what has been done;
one can only see what remains to be done…”

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I = 2πr

r
K

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I = 4πr 2

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“Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to

every real advance in science.”

James Clerk Maxwell, 1831 -1879

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IGNORANCE KNOWLEDGE

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KNOWLEDGE IGNORANCE

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KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS

I.I. Rabi
Nobel Laureate
NMR (1944)
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Science (and Art) is the Search for

Better Ignorance

Negative Capability
that is when a man is capable of
being in uncertainties, Mysteries,
doubts without any irritable
reaching after fact & reason...

...the ideal creative state

John Keats,
1817

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Science (and Art) is the Search for

Better Ignorance

In an honest search for knowledge

you quite often have to abide by
ignorance for an indefinite period.

Erwin Schrodinger,
1948

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We know there are known unknowns; that is to say we

know there are some things we do not know.

- Donald Rumsfeld (2002)

But there are also unknown unknowns

-- the ones we don't know we don't know.”
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New Heaven and Earth

1917

D.H. Lawrence 1885-1930

Now, here was I, new awakened,

with my hand stretching out,
And touching the unknown, the real unknown
The unknown unknown 29

Failure
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Failure
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Perhaps the history of errors of mankind, all things

considered, is more valuable and interesting than
that of their discoveries.

Truth is uniform and narrow…

but error is endlessly diversified.

- Benjamin Franklin

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Success is learning to fail again and again with no

lack of enthusiasm

Fail hard, fail fast

I’ve discovered 10,000 ways that don’t work

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

If you’re 40 years old and never had a failure - you’ve

been deprived.

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Failure
A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.
- Gertrude Stein

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
-Samuel Beckett, Westword Ho

Failure is not only valuable retrospectively, because it resulted

in some eventual success or lead to an unexpected discovery
(serendipity). These are all fine, but they are not a requirement
for a failure to be valuable.

Failure is integral to the process of science.

It cannot be left out or avoided.
It can be utilized and improved.
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We gain knowledge of ignorance through failures

If you perform an experiment and

it confirms the hypothesis,
you have made a measurement.

If you perform an experiment

that fails to prove the hypothesis,
you have made a discovery.
Enrico
Fermi
1901-1954

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When did you first learn that failure was an

important part of science?

• Elementary School
• High School
• Undergraduate
• Graduate School
• Never

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How much failure?

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The King’s of ...

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Have a Debacle
Current usage: An unmitigated disaster, a total failure
Etymology: from the French débâcler
- to free, unbar or unleash
(Original usage referred to nautical ice breaking, that is
breaking up something solid to provide new pathways.)

creativity may arise from associating new ideas; but…

it may also, and more powerfully, come from
dissociating ideas that have long been associated.
“It costs more to dissociate ideas than to associate
them.”
(see Ortega y Gasset, 1932, The Revolt of the Masses).

Have a Breakthrough
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Ignorance
Doubt
Uncertainty
Failure
The way forward…
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PLURALISM

Isaiah Berlin
1909-1997
Fox Hedgehog
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
Archilochus, Greek poet
Value Pluralism:
…not ‘anything goes’, but many chosen things go…

…and some of those things will have opposing values.

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PLURALISM

Neils Bohr

The opposite of a fact… is a falsehood.

The opposite of a profound truth is often…
another profound truth.

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PLURALISM
Science is not like a chain, only as strong as the
proverbial weakest link.

Science is like a cable made up of many delicate strands,

each one fragile but when bundled of immense
strength. And the loss of a few strands here and there
does not weaken the strength of the cable.
Charles S. Pierce
1868
• The Story of “My Dog”

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PLURALISM
Science is not like a chain, only as strong as the
proverbial weakest link.

Science is like a cable made up of many delicate strands,

each one fragile but when bundled of immense
strength. And the loss of a few strands here and there
does not weaken the strength of the cable.
Charles S. Pierce
1868
• The Story of “My Dog”

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Failure is a favor to the future

Rita Dove,
U.S. Poet Laureate
1993-1995

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and the moderator. Engaging, informative presentation
that provided insight I had not previously considered,
which to me is the hallmark of a worthwhile webinar!”

Quote in reference to: http://bit.ly/Chemophobia

Melanie Zanoza Bartelme

Associate Editor
Food Technology Magazine

Be a featured fan on an upcoming webinar! Write to us @ acswebinars@acs.org 46

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