News Summary

• And so I do think that intellectual humility is part of what it means to be an honest scientist.Aschwanden: It also seems necessary to always be seeking out errors or pockets of uncertainty if you’re going to make progress in science, right?Porter: Science is about making new discoveries.
• ?”Prescod-Weinstein: I think the intuitive way to think about this is that objects that we might think of as particles—like, you might imagine it as like a tiny little ball—can actually be conceived of as little waves.
• The difference is that if we think of science as the purveyor of facts, then we assume that when a scientist tells us, “This is what we found,” that it’s true.The idea of science as uncertainty reduction is to say, here’s the evidence that I have right now.
• It sends science in new directions; it gets people fighting.Aschwanden: Those are the findings that make news headlines.Nosek: And then there’s this science that’s maturing over time, that sort of, like, “Oh, we think we got a hang of this.
• Intellectual humility can be hard to practice, right?Porter: Part of how intellectual humility kind of can manifest ... is a willingness to reveal we don’t know something or are confused about something—to actually say, “Oh, I’ve never heard of that person,” which can be a difficult thing to do.
• And ultimately, you cannot learn something that you think you already know.Aschwanden: How is intellectual humility related to curiosity?Porter: I think that intellectual humility is necessary for curiosity because if you already have it all figured out, why would you be curious about anything at all?