(I) Perhaps more than any profession, science places a
premium on being correct, but mistakes can push
scientific understanding forward. (II) Acknowledging
mistakes in scientific studies may not often be key to
advancement. (III) Historians have unearthed many
instances in which an incorrect idea proved far more
potent than thousands of others that were widely
accepted. (IV) Moreover, errors that touch on deep
features of the world can be more valuable in the long
run than narrowly correct ideas. (V) Niels Bohr, for
example, created a model of the atom that was wrong in
nearly every way, but it inspired the
quantum-mechanical revolution