16 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Joy of Being Wrong
It does happen. I have previously told the story of a respected elder statesman of the Zoology Department at Oxford when I was an undergraduate. For years he had passionately believed, and taught, that the Golgi Apparatus (a microscopic feature of the interior of cells) was not real: an artefact, an illusion. Every Monday afternoon it was the custom for the whole department to listen to a research talk by a visiting lecturer. One Monday, the visitor was an American cell biologist who presente...Dawkins describes a professor being convinced that he was wrong about something for many years and being thankful for convincing to the truth.