I enjoyed Tomasz Durakiewicz’s commentary in the November 2022 issue of Physics Today (page 10) about the benefits of being a maverick. He gave some wonderful examples of mavericks who succeeded, but what about those who failed? Some failed for bad reasons, such as trying to create perpetual motion machines. But some—such as Albert Michelson and Edward Morley in their famous experiment—failed for good reasons, and the world learned something from their failure.
I spent the bulk of my career doing research in industry. A director of research at one lab used to say, “If we’re succeeding all the time, we’re not trying hard enough.” The question then becomes how does one reward the “good” failures. I don’t think he ever figured that out. Has physics?
