From Richard Feynman (1918-1988), American physicist, from a 1974 Cal Tech commencement speech:
We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.
Mr. Feynman’s statement could be broadened in its application. For “much of the research in cargo cult science” in the last sentence, substitute “most of humanity’s affairs.”
