Organizations need to improve their willingness to accept and learn from failure, even when the stakes are high. Yes, that even applies to researchers and medicine. Failure is essential to science. Experimentation and exploration are the core elements of research. These fundamentals are taught to our children in their first school science lessons.
In collaboration with Journal of Trial and Error, and their science writer Marcel Hobma, we developed a new exhibition theme focused on failure in science.
MEDICAL MISSHAPS
IBM promised to revolutionize healthcare with their famous AI supercomputer Watson. An AI doctor with all the knowledge from all the worlds medical research.
Kent cigarettes thought they struck gold in 1952 when they unveiled the “greatest health protection in cigarette history”, an innovative new filter called Micronite.
Nothing fosters confidence in dental care like a brand specializing in weapons. In the 1960s...
Do you sometimes feel nervous, irritable or sad? If you are a woman, then you might suffer from hysteria.
A lobotomy was a surgical procedure to treat psychiatric symptoms by destroying brain tissue in the prefrontal cortex.
The artificial trachea did not work. Macciarini was convicted of clinical misconduct and research fraud. The scandal cost many people their lives
Psychological debriefing was a new form of psychological treatment introduced to prevent these psychological problems.
The biggest advantage was that the insulin no longer needed to be injected with syringes.
For knowledge to grow, we need to be able to read about experiments and studies gone wrong, medical treatments that do not work, statistically insignificant results and other interesting research that does not get published.
SCIENCE
It is paradoxical that, while failed studies are just as important for the advancement of knowledge as successful studies, scientific articles always present positive results. This positive-results bias is a massive issue within the scientific community (some fields are worse than others).
