Failure: Why Science Is So Successful

10/13/2016

We will begin momentarily at 2pm ET

Slides available now! Recordings available as an exclusive ACS member benefit.

www.acs.org/acswebinars Contact ACS Webinars ® at [email protected]

1

Have Questions?

Type them into questions box! “Why am I muted?” Don’t worry. Everyone is muted except the presenter and host. Thank you and enjoy the show. Contact ACS Webinars ® at [email protected]

2

1

10/13/2016

Have you discovered the missing element?

http://bit.ly/benefitsACS Find the many benefits of ACS membership! 3

Benefits of ACS Membership Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) The preeminent weekly news source. NEW! Free Access to ACS Presentations on Demand® ACS Member only access to over 1,000 presentation recordings from recent ACS meetings and select events. NEW! ACS Career Navigator Your source for leadership development, professional education, career services, and much more.

http://bit.ly/benefitsACS

4

2

10/13/2016

Let’s get Social…post, tweet, and link to ACS Webinars during today’s broadcast!

facebook.com/acswebinars

@acswebinars

Search for “acswebinars” and connect!

5

How has ACS Webinars ® benefited you?

“Fantastic speaker and great energy between Kennedy 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 @ [email protected]

6

3

10/13/2016

7

Learn from the best and brightest minds in chemistry! Hundreds of webinars presented by subject matter experts in the chemical enterprise. Recordings are available to current ACS members one week after the Live broadcast date. www.acs.org/acswebinars Broadcasts of ACS Webinars® continue to be available to the general public LIVE every Thursday at 2pm ET!

www.acs.org/acswebinars

8

4

10/13/2016

ChemIDP.org

Upcoming ACS Webinars www.acs.org/acswebinars Thursday, October 20, 2016 Cosmetic Chemistry: Novel Approaches using Natural and Renewable Ingredients Richard Blackburn, Richard Blackburn, University of Leeds and Keracol Limited Nidia Trejo, Ithaca Waste Water Treatment Facility

Thursday, October 27, 2016 Rational Design of Small Molecules Targeting RNA Session 10 of the 2016 Drug Design and Delivery Symposium Matthew Disney, The Scripps Research Institute Amanda Garner, University of Michigan

Contact ACS Webinars ® at [email protected]

10

5

10/13/2016

Failure: Why Science Is So Successful

Stuart Firestein Author and Professor of Neuroscience, Columbia University

Darren Griffin Professor of Genetics, University of Kent, UK

Slides available now! Recordings will be available to ACS members


11

Failure why science is so successful

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

6

10/13/2016

IGNORANCE Doubt Uncertainty Failure 13

Ignorance Doubt Uncertainty Failure Why Science is So Successful 14

14

7

10/13/2016

How Successful ?

Acheulean hand axe : 1.7 Mya - 0.5 Mya The Bronze Age 3300 - 1300 BCE ~ 50 generations 15

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

F =ma S= k logW e=mc2 16

8

10/13/2016

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

F =ma S= k logW e=mc2 17

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 ? 18

9

10/13/2016

SCIENCE Fact Doubt

Truth Uncertainty

19

It’s very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room. Especially when there is no cat

20

10

10/13/2016

The Scientific Method vs. Farting Around ...in the dark

21

21

How much of science do you believe proceeds by the Scientific Method and how much by intuition, guessing, trial and error? • Zero • About a quarter • About half • About three quarters • Roughly All

22

11

10/13/2016

Marie Curie 1867-1934 “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done…” 23

24

23

24

12

10/13/2016

25

26

25

26

13

10/13/2016

I

K

= 2πr

r

27

I = 4πr 2

K

28

14

10/13/2016

“Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.”

James Clerk Maxwell, 1831 -1879 29

IGNORANCE

KNOWLEDGE

30

30

15

10/13/2016

KNOWLEDGE

IGNORANCE

31

31

KNOWLEDGE

QUESTIONS I.I. Rabi Nobel Laureate NMR (1944)

32

32

16

10/13/2016

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

33

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

34

17

10/13/2016

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.” 35

35

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 36

18

10/13/2016

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 37

Failure 38

19

10/13/2016

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

39

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. 40

20

10/13/2016

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. 41

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

42

42

21

10/13/2016

When did you first learn that failure was an important part of science? • Elementary School • High School

• Undergraduate • Graduate School • Never

43

How much failure?

44

22

10/13/2016

The King’s of ...

45

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 46

23

10/13/2016

Ignorance Doubt Uncertainty Failure The way forward… 47

47

PLURALISM

Fox

Isaiah Berlin 1909-1997

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. 48

24

10/13/2016

PLURALISM

Neils Bohr The opposite of a fact… is a falsehood. The opposite of a profound truth is often… another profound truth.

49

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

Charles S. Pierce 1868

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.

•

The Story of “My Dog”

50

25

10/13/2016

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

Charles S. Pierce 1868

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.

•

The Story of “My Dog”

51

Failure is a favor to the future

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

52

52

26

10/13/2016






53




54

27

10/13/2016






55

How has ACS Webinars ® benefited you?

“Fantastic speaker and great energy between Kennedy 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 @ [email protected] 56

28

10/13/2016

57

Benefits of ACS Membership Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) The preeminent weekly news source. NEW! Free Access to ACS Presentations on Demand® ACS Member only access to over 1,000 presentation recordings from recent ACS meetings and select events. NEW! ACS Career Navigator Your source for leadership development, professional education, career services, and much more.

http://bit.ly/benefitsACS

58

29

10/13/2016

®

ACS Webinars does not endorse any products or services. The views expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the American Chemical Society.


59




60

30

Failure: Why Science Is So Successful

Recommend Documents