Abstract
The annals of science are filled with successes. Only in footnotes do we hear about the failures, the cul-de-sacs, and the forgotten ideas. Failure is how research advances. Yet it hardly features in theoretical perspectives on science. That is a mistake. Failures, whether clear-cut or ambiguous, are heuristically fruitful in their own right. Thinking about failure questions our measures of success, including the conceptual foundations of current practice, that can only be transient in an experimental context. This article advances the heuristics of failure analysis, meaning the explicit treatment of certain ideas or models as failures. The value of failures qua being a failure is illustrated with the example of grandmother cells; the contested idea of a hypothetical neuron that encodes a highly specific but complex stimulus, such as the image of one’s grandmother. Repeatedly evoked in popular science and maintained in textbooks, there is sufficient reason to critically review the theoretical and empirical background of this idea.
Highlights
WHY TALK ABOUT FAILURE IN SCIENCE?Science fails
Following this is a critical evaluation of why the idea of grandmother cells can be considered a failure, and how this treatment informs theoretical perspectives on science, especially for the avoidance of relativism in the presence of model pluralism
This article offered one way to use failure as an epistemic tool propeling scientific research; asking: how to cope with potentially dead-end concepts? We saw that thinking about failure in science is beneficial if it leads directly toward future successes
Summary
Failure in Science: Grandmother Cells a problematic picture of science because it never makes explicit the ubiquitous presence and influence of failures at the laboratory bench and modeling board (Medarwar, 1959/1999; Firestein, 2015; Schickore, in review) This has several negative consequences of importance for theoretical perspectives on science. The section introduces the historical origins of grandmother cells before breaking down the different lines of evidence and challenges involved in their investigation Following this is a critical evaluation of why the idea of grandmother cells can be considered a failure, and how this treatment informs theoretical perspectives on science, especially for the avoidance of relativism in the presence of model pluralism. The paper concludes with a broader outlook on how thinking about failure informs science, including science communication and funding
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