Accidents Happen

Accidents Happen Parents are always the optimistic ones, right? My mom always has a response for me when I claim I made a mistake: We dont make mistakes; we just create new ideas. Wellshe was right. Physicist Joseph Henry said something similar: The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them. I recently read an article on Slashdot about the power of accidental discoveries. They linked to two great articles, one from Wired Magazine and the other from PBS. Its somewhat strange to think that something that is so widely used like penicillin was discovered accidentally. Discuss: What is more important in science: getting results or finding new questions to explore? Being a scientist-in-training myself, this is encouraging because sometimes I feel like my experiments are more mistakes than intentional, but maybe I need to start looking at the glass of science as half full. And just a little Monday morning humor courtesy of one of my favorite comics: