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Cargo Cult Science

by Richard Feynman

Feynman's 1974 Caltech commencement address is still the best short statement of what scientific integrity demands beyond mere honesty. He describes Young's 1937 rat-maze experiment that nobody built on, and the way measurements of the electron's charge crept slowly away from Millikan's slightly wrong value because people were reluctant to publish numbers too far from it. His rule is that the person you must be most careful not to fool is yourself.