Editors comment: David recently sent this to some colleagues and I asked if he would permit me to post it as a blog. He agreed. For those of you too young to know, Skinner was a famous (and occasionally controversial, American psychologist perhaps most well known for ‘conditioning’.<\/p>\n
Sleet wrote: I recently re-read parts of THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR (BF Skinner, 1953) and what Skinner thought about science …thought I would share this<\/p>\n
\u201cScience is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.\u00a0 We often see things as we want to see them, instead of as they are.\u00a0 Intellectual honesty is an extremely important possession of the successful scientist.\u00a0\u00a0 Scientists are by nature are not more honest than other men, but the practice of science puts an exceptionally high premium on honesty.<\/p>\n
It is characteristic of science that any lack of honesty quickly brings disaster.\u00a0 Consider a scientists who re-tests his own theory.\u00a0 The result may confirm his theory, contradict it, or leave it in doubt.\u00a0 In spite of an inclination to the contrary, he must report a contradiction just as readily as the confirmation.\u00a0 If he does not, someone else will \u2013 in\u00a0 a matter of weeks or months\u00a0 \u2013 and this will be more damaging to his prestige than if he himself had reported it.<\/p>\n
Scientists have simply found that being honest \u2013 with oneself as much as with others \u2013 is essential to progress.\u00a0 Experiments do not always come out as one expects, but the facts must stand and the expectations fall.\u00a0 The results, not the scientist, know best.\u00a0\u00a0 Facts must be accepted, no matter how distasteful their momentary consequences.<\/p>\n
Scientists have also discovered the value of remaining without an answer until a satisfactory one can be found.\u00a0 This is a difficult lesion.\u00a0 It takes considerable training to avoid premature conclusions, to refrain from making statements on insufficient evidence, and to avoid explanations which are pure invention.\u00a0 Yet the history of science has demonstrated again and again the advantage of these practices.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I visited him in 1976, he had a sign on his door that read \u201cThere is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at and missed\u201d.\u00a0 I never asked him, but this quote was probably based on\u00a0 his absolute confidence in the quality and rigor of his own science, and that no matter what his critics said or did, his work had been conducted honestly and his findings were defensible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Editors comment: David recently sent this to some colleagues and I asked if he would permit me to post it as a blog. He agreed. For those of you too young to know, Skinner was a famous (and occasionally controversial, American psychologist perhaps most well known for ‘conditioning’. Sleet wrote: I recently re-read parts of […]<\/p>\n