Repeat after me...

[fjm]

Just because someone is really important, and has done amazing work doesn't mean they can't be wrong.

Mantra given to all PhD students and rather on my mind this morning.

Comments

[daveon]

Likewise engineers pontificating outside their field are almost always wrong.

[purplecthulhu]

Just because its published in a major peer reviewed journal, doesn't mean that it can't be wrong.

Actually, in the case of Nature, the papers often are wrong*.

*Excepting the ones with me as an author, of course :-)

[swan_tower]

This was probably the single best lesson I learned in my sophomore archaeology tutorial. That's the class that broke me of the pre-college belief that stuff that had been Published by Academics was invulnerable to assail from a lowly undergrad. (My tutorial leader achieved this by running us through the history of archaeological theory at high speed, starting all the way back with Lewis Henry Morgan. Each week, he would ask us where the problems were with what we had read -- and since in the early stages this was like shooting comatose fish in a barrel, we were all in the habit of hacking things apart by the time we got to more modern viewpoints.)

[cmcmck]

Yes, this!

I have a book on early dissemination of print media to review today and one of the articles is by Joad Raymond (who is also one of the collection's editors) who I respect deeply, but with whom I am going to have to argue on this occasion.

[s0b]

it reminds me of the old usenet rule (can't remember which number)

"There is always someone, somewhere, who knows something that you don't; you never know who that person will be."

[themis1]

Well, quite. I am a great fan of Bishop Berkeley's philosophy, but I would never follow his beliefs on the subject of tar water!