talk · 1974
Richard Feynman · read the source
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.”
Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science (1974) · Caltech commencement address · read it
Kept because every bias on this site is a way of fooling yourself, and Feynman names the fix before the problem. The rest of the talk is about what he called bending over backwards: reporting what might make you wrong, not just what makes you right.
“I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist.”
Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science (1974) · Caltech commencement address · read it
Kept as the standard for any public claim, including the ones on this site. Not lying is the floor. The extra integrity is volunteering the evidence against yourself before anyone asks for it.
