We must believe that the publications of our colleagues are presented in good faith, for only then can we analyze their work to discover errors. Fraud is the worst of all offenses - a violation of community standards that must be respected and internalized, lest the community die. But we cannot completely eliminate the consequences without compromising the main activity. People work this way. We are fallible creatures.
Ambiguity defines the richness of our intellectual lives.
Work of intellectual daring carries the danger of increased error, in both frequency and consequence. If they wished to avoid all possibility of error, Galileo would have trained his telescope on the next building, and Darwin would have stuck with pigeons. Error is the flipside of great discovery. Together they form one coin, and their common currency is brilliance. Error is a spur to correction.