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My first reaction to this is that it is bad. Unlike other fields, you shouldn't be punished for making a mistake in Science. Science is driven off of mistakes

by jmcqk6 15y ago

My first reaction to this is that it is bad. Unlike other fields, you shouldn't be punished for making a mistake in Science. Science is driven off of mistakes and being wrong, and it's the opposite of everything else. I know the article says that there were other issues that led to this resignation, but just the fact that they've resigned has changed this scenario from being an exemplar of science to something muddy and mundane.

knorby 15y ago
I know someone who has worked on similar experiments, and he was able to predict the fault that caused this problem upon first hearing about it, and a fair number of similar people were able to do the same. Someone who is too anxious to announce a major result without having checked common faults that could explain away the result first shouldn't be in charge of a major experiment.
rprospero 15y ago
True, science is driven off of mistakes. However, it's driven off of novel mistakes. In my own research, I've had experimental results that violated the second law of thermodynamics, showed nuclear fusion at room temperature, and indicated that the strength of the strong force was could be controlled by shaking it. If I published a paper every time I had results that disagreed with known science, I'd have more papers than Feynman. Of course, the first one turned out to be a bad power supply and the second one a busted motor. There's no science being done there since these are exactly the results one would expect from experiments with those pieces of equipment. As for the third one, I don't know yet, but I already have a couple of good leads on where the problem might be. If I can't find anything, I'll publish the results, but there's a lot of things I need to test before that happens. As a matter of personal opinion, the vote of no-confidence was probably overkill and the resignation not necessary. Science does need to publish the mistakes so that other scientists can learn from it. Heck, I learned some bits from LIGO's problems with RF a few years back. I think most of the frustration is just coming from the fact that no one's learned anything new from this mistake.

by jmcqk6 15y ago

knorby 15y ago

I know someone who has worked on similar experiments, and he was able to predict the fault that caused this problem upon first hearing about it, and a fair number of similar people were able to do the same. Someone who is too anxious to announce a major result without having checked common faults that could explain away the result first shouldn't be in charge of a major experiment.

rprospero 15y ago

True, science is driven off of mistakes. However, it's driven off of novel mistakes. In my own research, I've had experimental results that violated the second law of thermodynamics, showed nuclear fusion at room temperature, and indicated that the strength of the strong force was could be controlled by shaking it. If I published a paper every time I had results that disagreed with known science, I'd have more papers than Feynman. Of course, the first one turned out to be a bad power supply and the second one a busted motor. There's no science being done there since these are exactly the results one would expect from experiments with those pieces of equipment. As for the third one, I don't know yet, but I already have a couple of good leads on where the problem might be. If I can't find anything, I'll publish the results, but there's a lot of things I need to test before that happens. As a matter of personal opinion, the vote of no-confidence was probably overkill and the resignation not necessary. Science does need to publish the mistakes so that other scientists can learn from it. Heck, I learned some bits from LIGO's problems with RF a few years back. I think most of the frustration is just coming from the fact that no one's learned anything new from this mistake.