A look back at this week--value of dissent, getting value from mistakes

Further to the post about the value of dissent, Max Boisot wrote a riotously funny post on how rows (pronounced the British way, raows, and meaning fights) between him and a collaborator improved the quality of their work together.

And on the idea of publicizing and learning from mistakes, the Wall Street Journal Informed Reader pointed out an article in Wired Magazine by deputy editor Thomas Goetz advocating that data from failed or abandoned studies be made available to researchers. One repository of this type of information, Mr. Goetz points out, is the lusciously named Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine.

(The above also reminded me of the HBR article stating that finding uses for output of terminated R&D projects is one way to improve R&D cost-benefit.)