While we are superb at spotting and critising the errors of others and often take delight in this, we fail to see our own mistakes or make excuses when we do
HOW DOES it feel to be wrong? Most people when asked this question will produce a list that will probably include such descriptors as embarrassing, stupid, annoying and mortifying. Being wrong is not regarded as a good place to be. Yet, while people may believe they are regularly wrong about things, and they are, asking them to list 10 examples is likely to result in failure. Try it for yourself. Except for glaringly disturbing errors, mistakes are readily forgotten.
The feeling we get when we are wrong is a strong sense that we are right. It is only when we become aware of our wrongness that we can respond to it. Being wrong can only be expressed in the past tense, never in the present, and that expression is exceedingly difficult to utter. Often we continue to plough on rather than admit our error.
Being right feels normal. We live within a grand illusion of correctness. Our memories feel accurate and dependable, our values feel intrinsically correct and our view of the world feels like it’s the right one. In essence, for much of our lives, we operate as though we border on infallibility. We love to be right, whether it’s producing a correct answer in a pub quiz, or predicting the demise of that poor old guy down the road who has been a bit off colour for a while.
Kathryn Schulz, in her excellent book, Being Wrong: adventures in the margin of error, tells of Bob Gelbspan, who covered a conference on environmental issues for the New York publication, Village Voice. The conference message was grim: uncontrolled population growth, food shortages and a plethora of other potential disasters. In the midst of all the woe he was struck by the fact that one of the presenters was pregnant. Gelbspan built his story around this uplifting contrast. Here, he felt, was a vote of confidence in the future. The editor was so impressed he put it on the front page. However, the presenter was not pregnant. Almost 40 years later, Gelbspan apparently still blushes at the memory.
We are superb at spotting and criticising the errors of others, and regularly take delight in this. In contrast, we often do not spot our own errors and if we do, or, if they are drawn to our attention, we go to great lengths to justify them or blame them on extrinsic factors outside our control. We find it very difficult to say “I was wrong”.
This state of affairs can cause no end of problems at home, in work or on the sports field. A capacity to stand up and say “I’m sorry, it was my fault, I was wrong”, would defuse many a tiff or outright war. The reasons for our ambivalent relationship with being wrong or right are complex and involve among other things, faulty perceptual systems, distorted memories, emotional lability and complicated allegiances. Also, being wrong is plagued with negative connotations suggesting ignorance, stupidity, laziness or even nastiness, so we tend to avoid the risk of such labels being applied to us.
Interestingly, as Schulz points out, although small amounts of evidence may be enough to cause us to draw conclusions, they are seldom enough to make us revise our position once adopted. This can have devastating effects in areas such as medicine, aviation and science.
A classic and tragic illustration is the case of Trofym Lysenko in the Soviet Union who, from the 1930s through to the 1960s retarded the development of biological science, particularly genetics, because of his rejection of Mendelian genetics in favour of the mistaken views of Lamarck which emphasised the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Lysenko’s theoretical leanings and his many fraudulent experimental claims meshed with the ideologies and agendas of Stalin and later Khrushchev. This, despite extensive evidence to the contrary, resulted in a context in which many people were imprisoned, starved and died as opposition to Lysenko’s role and rule was systematically quashed.
The day-to-day practices of science, medicine and aviation have many procedures built in to protect against human error. However, among the public and I suspect among scientists, doctors and pilots outside the immediate workplace, error reigns sup- reme along with its resistance to admission.
The physicist Richard Feynman emphasised the importance of specifying our errors. He stated that we should bend over back- wards to show how maybe we got experiments wrong. He also showed the easiest person to fool is yourself. If you can avoid this, it’s easier not to fool others. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
Feynman’s ideals are not easily realised. However, aside from the occasional cost, we could all gain significantly from a rethinking of the value in being wrong. Admitting error need not elicit distress or embarrassment. It can reduce conflict, increase tolerance, teach us new things and make us better people.
Paul O’Donoghue is a clinical psychologist and founder member of the Irish Skeptics Society