A good scientist is someone who’s excited to be proven wrong. That’s harder than it sounds.

Wanting to be right and wanting to know are different desires, and they pull against each other the moment evidence turns up. Being glad to be corrected means your attachment is to the answer rather than to your version of it, which is genuinely hard, because being wrong in front of people feels like losing. The people who manage it become accurate faster than everybody else.

Try saying thank you the next time somebody corrects a fact of yours, and mean it. Notice the pull to defend your first position. Changing your answer immediately rather than tomorrow is the part worth practising.