A Tale of Scientific Integrity

Thanks for watching, and thanks to our sponsor. Click betterhelp.com/coolworlds for 10% off your first month of therapy with our sponsor BetterHelp. Join over 4 million people who’ve met with a therapist on BetterHelp and started living a healthier, happier life. Let me know how you would have dealt with Matt's situation down below...

Science is hard. Math is hard. Integrity is harder. Mad respect for standing up for all three.

“A world that celebrates stubbornness” is actually putting a kind, hopeful face on the matter. All too often, tragically, it’s a world that celebrates outright lies.

I was in this situation in grad school. I was literally writing my dissertation and was almost done. I could’ve covered it up and no one would’ve noticed for years, if ever. No one was checking my results. I went straight to my advisor, totally dejected, and told him I’d made a mistake. He was understanding and allowed me to repeat the key experiments for my thesis project. In the end, the conclusions were the same. But I felt better by admitting my error immediately, fixing it, and repeating my research.

I showed this to my wife. We've have been in the process of divorce that I can confidently state, is now on hold. I've had trouble expressing how much I look up to people that can change their mind. I've been in the right in regards to the impetus of our issues. But I have to be willing to now practice what I preach in regards to the solutions. Not just quit. Thanks again. You have a wider impact than science.

There is no more believable statement than " I was Wrong" and its great integrity.

I once spent years on a theoretical paper based on some very involved perturbation calculus, and it was absolutely crushing when a referee pointed out a minor error that gutted every single result — but after another year fixing things, I was able to tie it all together far more beautifully, and it was definitely all worth it

To discover integrity in public figures is a greater and more beneficial find than discovering exoplanets.

Prof. Bailes is clearly a man & a scientist of enormous integrity and courage. Let's hope his example is followed by others, else the science naysayers will surely win. I come across this problem in my field (medicine) and I assure you there is not as much humility. Thank you for sharing this.

We all make mistakes. How we handle them is what defines us.

Hadn't heard the full story before, a good watch. The world would be in a far better place if more people had such integrity.

believe me, I've experienced that sinking feeling ... that horrified thought "how will we tell others!" and then a cold numbness... then the finality of it - that u have to accept the truth and tell it - as it is! It takes courage to do the right thing! congratulations! kudos!

The fact that the man volunteered that he was wrong restores some of my lost faith in humanity. Well done sir.

The honesty and ability to humble themselves snd admit they made a mistake is so refreshing and respectable. I can completely understand why they got a standing ovation. Science is such a tricky subject and its full of 100s of examples of theories and ideas that ended up being incorrect. Even when mistakes are made, they're not useless. They're another learning experience.

Pretty sure I’ve watched all of the CW videos on YouTube. This is one of the very best, it’s so “human” - thank you

Prof.Bailes what an amazing human being. Thank you Cool World for this amazing look at history!

Definitely worth applauding how much courage it took to admit that mistake alongside any major discovery that withstands scrutiny.

Not an academic but just love these videos. Thank you Prof.

I really appreciated the unedited interview, despite it's lack of cinematics. There's few moments like these in our lives in which we can truly shape who we want to be and become. Watching the interview, it seemed that he unfortunately, still, blames himself for his past mistakes. I hope he understands the importance of the message he conveyed. Thank you for bringing it to us. :)

I was at an astronomy conference where the speaker did get a standing ovation. John Mather was to give a talk at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 1992 on the latest results from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). He walked onto the stage and without saying a word, signaled for the first slide of the talk to be projected on the screen. This slide was just a plot showing the Black Body curve of the Universe derived from COBE data. Everyone immediately recognized the significance of that plot and the 1000 or so people in the audience simultaneously stood up and gave him a standing ovation. The applause lasted for quite some time, and only when the applause died down did he speak, first introducing himself and then mentioning the names of his collaborators. Not too unexpectedly, my own poster paper at the conference garnered far less interest. Anyway, John Mather got the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 and I still work in obscurity.