Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to

other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd

love to hear from you. Today is February 18th, 2011, and my guest is Freeman Dyson. Professor

Dyson, welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you. You've written in praise of heretics. What is a heretic

in your view, and why are they important? Well, because there's a tendency for people to

think in groups and to follow the party line. Most of the time we were so happy going along

with what other people are thinking, and it's very often what other people are thinking

is wrong. If you are a heretic and stick out for something unorthodox, you have a chance

to do something important. You said that most people are comfortable

going along. That's not the impression, I think, that most people have a scientist. I think

we have a romantic vision of scientists sitting in a laboratory seeking truth. Why do you

think there's groupthink in science? Well, I see it all all around me. I mean, and I'm

a victim of it myself. I mean, we especially in astronomy because it was the universe

that started away a long ago, and you have all sorts of pictures about it. Model what

we call models, which are descriptions of the way we think it is. Of course, they are

hopelessly oversimplified, but still, it's nice to have a model to have some picture of

what it is you're talking about. Some people just tend to believe their own models after

a while and do sort of lose the awareness that the model may be very different from reality.

Have you seen many cases in your experience where a scientist who has devoted a significant

chunk of time and passion to a model say it was wrong? I made a mistake.

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