Ideas change everything

The secret to scientific discoveries? Making mistakes

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Phil Plait |

TEDxBoulder

• June 2018

Phil Plait was on a Hubble Space Telescope team of astronomers who thought they may have captured the first direct photo of an exoplanet ever taken. But did the evidence actually support that? Follow along as Plait shows how science progresses -- through a robust amount of making and correcting errors. "The price of doing science is admitting when you're wrong, but the payoff is the best there is: knowledge and understanding," he says.

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Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Phil Plait was on a Hubble Space Telescope team of astronomers who thought they may have captured the first direct photo of an exoplanet ever taken. But did the evidence actually support that? Follow along as Plait shows how science progresses -- through a robust amount of making and correcting errors. "The price of doing science is admitting when you're wrong, but the payoff is the best there is: knowledge and understanding," he says.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBoulder, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

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Phil Plait has spent his life evangelizing science, getting the word out about the real world and how we know what we know about it.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxBoulder, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.

Phil Plait: The secret to scientific discoveries? Making mistakes | TED Talk