> If I had the chance to have a second career, I would try harder not to follow of the fashion of the herd. The mistakes I have made, at least those into which

> If I had the chance to have a second career, I would try harder not to follow of the fashion of the herd. The mistakes I have made, at least those into which I have insight, have usually resulted from adhering excessively to the prevailing orthodoxy. I would rather say, that researcher needs to train himself to start with completely neutral attitude to any new idea. Sometimes even old idea deserves to be examined from scratch. This needs a very specific skill to shut off existing beliefs and to start from blank page. It is all bayesian. You get new proposition, assign 0.5 likelyhood to it, and then you start thinking. While you think you must be ready to reject any idea regardless of its plausibility, if such a rejection allow to see things from new angle. Probably it will lead to some kind of contradiction, but you might not know it a priori, so the only way to be sure is to try it. All this test rejections should be done systematically and consiously. Or you need to be a genius to do it intuitively in right circumstances. It needs training, and the best training I know is to learn how to agree with anyone. One need to learn how to understand point of view of other person and to look from that point of view. I'm really surprised, that psychiatrist can make mistakes of not accepting some ideas before taking a close look at them. I tend to believe that ability to understand any point of view, even delirium one, is the key tool for psychiatrist.