E. O. Wilson Quote

Keep in mind that new ideas are commonplace, and almost always wrong. Most flashes of insight lead nowhere; statistically, they have a half-life of hours or maybe days. Most experiments to follow up the surviving insights are tedious and consume large amounts of time, only to yield negative or (worse!) ambiguous results.

Scientists, Scholars, Knaves and Fools, American Scientist, Volume 86, January-February 1998 (p. 6)