Productive Ignorance/ Productive Failure

“I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot...and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why... I succeed.”
--Michael Jordan

Both Michael Jordan and a microbiologist named Martin A. Schwartz believe that taking risks and failing -- whether by missing shots in a basketball game or trying to solve intractable scientific problems -- is the key to succeeding. As Schwartz puts it, the reason for taking exams (i.e. comprehensive or qualifying exams for a thesis or dissertation) in the first place is to see if the student "fails at a sufficiently high level." It is the nerve to take risks in the first place that is the only path to breaking through to a new level.

The importance of stupidity in science, Journal of Cell Science 121, 1771 (2008).