You Are the Easiest Person to Fool
Richard Feynman, “Cargo Cult Science”, Caltech commencement address (1974)
Feynman told the story of islanders who, after the war, built runways and wooden control towers, hoping the cargo planes would return. Everything looked right, but the planes never landed. He called research that copies the form of science without its substance cargo cult science.
Copying the rituals of a method is not the same as using it.
The cure, he said, is a kind of radical honesty. Report the results that do not fit. List everything that could make your conclusion wrong. The hardest person to be honest with is yourself, because you are the one who wants the answer.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself.” — Feynman
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