Richard Feynman on Scientific Integrity

As an amorphous guideline for what should be included in your report for the rover design competition, I give you the following thoughts from Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. What should you take from this? If you explain not just the good features of your rover, but also the questionable features and why it is possible that they may fail, we--the judges--will see that as a very positive thing. Every design has its flaws; the designers that recognize their flaws will be the most successful, as they will know what needs to be fixed.

(Or, in other words, we also have access to the internet, journals, experts, etc., so we have a pretty good idea of what might be wrong with your design--but we think you'll come up with something creative so go for it.)

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the  South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the  shapes of the earphones. But there  is one feature  I notice  that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all  hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a  kind of leaning over backwards. For  example, if you're  doing  an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree  with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just  the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.