“When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of “popular” writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as “conjecture and refutation.””

—  Stephen Jay Gould

"An Essay on a Pig Roast", p. 437
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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