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Failure: The Blog  

August 2018

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July 2018

  • Fear This Instead Of Failure
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June 2018

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May 2018

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  • MIT Accidentally Creates New Smelting Process

April 2018

  • Johnny Cash Quit Singing Lessons
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  • Rock Around The Clock Was a Commercial Failure
  • Sigmund Freud Should Have Been Discouraged

March 2018

  • Superman Couldn't Fly
  • This School Shares Failures
  • Jim Croce's Parents Hoped He Would Fail

[More archives...]

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Cosmic Error, Standing Ovation

February 25th, 2011 - by Robby Slaughter

Astronomer Andrew Lyne thought he made the discovery of a lifetime: the incredible find of a planet orbiting a pulsar star. The news looked like it might change the field forever.

space and failure
Photo © Flickr User NASA Goddard Photo and Video

But according to the Wikipedia article Lyne and his colleague Matthew Bailes, problems were soon discovered:

However, after this was announced, the group went back and checked their work, and found that they had not properly removed the effects of the Earth’s motion around the Sun from their analysis, and, when the calculations were redone correctly, the pulse variations that led to their conclusions disappeared, and that there was in fact no planet around [the pulsar].

This experience might best be described by reversing an old expression: Lyne had defeat snatched from the claws of victory.

It was then that Andrew Lyne decided to do something which has been elevated to folklore in the scientific community. Again from Wikipedia:

[When Lyne] announced the retraction of his results at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, he received a standing ovation from his scientific colleagues for having the intellectual integrity and the courage to admit this error publicly.

Failure, again is the secret to success. Instead of scolding him for making an error, his peers praised him for setting things right. Andrew Lyne made a discovery: finding the truth often first requires being wrong.

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