If you found out that right at the very beginning of scientific research that one little tiny mistake was made, but as

Question: If you found out that right at the very beginning of scientific research that one little tiny mistake was made, but as a result of that mistake, everything you know today is wrong, how on EARTH would you fix it???

Asked by iwantacharlie95 to Jess on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: Your Research.
- Jessica Housden answered on 18 Jun 2010:
  
  Well, I guess this happens to us all of the time in some sense or another. Your options (in life) are to go back and start again, give up or try to hide it.
  
  In science, everything we do is checked by other people who know lots and lots, so covering it up would be a really silly thing to try to do. I reckon most scientists would want to go back, as they will be so frustrated that they’ll really want to know the answer, but I do think some people might give up, which is a shmae as they will have learned a lot from doing it the first time round anyway.
  
  However, there have been some big mistakes made in the past, but evetually they will be picked up on and that is actually a very good way for science to progress; through the mistakes!

Question: If you found out that right at the very beginning of scientific research that one little tiny mistake was made, but as a result of that mistake, everything you know today is wrong, how on EARTH would you fix it???