Johannes Kepler, whose life spanned from the late 1500s to the early 1600s, was perhaps most remarkable as a scientist for his discovery that planets moved in ellipses around the Sun. Without the ability to throw out his own brilliant idea, he never could’ve gotten there. (Credits: August Köhler/public domain (L); Datumizer/Wikimedia Commons (R))

Why Johannes Kepler is a scientist’s best role model

When people pick the greatest scientist of all-time, Newton and Einstein always come up. Perhaps they should name Johannes Kepler, instead.

For a great many people in the world, the three hardest words to say are simply, “I was wrong.” Even if the evidence is overwhelmingly decisive that your idea or conception is unsupported, most people will instead find a way to discount or ignore that evidence and stick to their guns. People’s minds are notoriously resistant to change, and the greater their own personal stake in the outcome of the issue under debate, the less open they are to even the possibility that they might be mistaken.

Although it’s often asserted that science is the exception to this general rule, that’s only true of science as a collective enterprise. On an individual basis, scientists are just as susceptible to confirmation bias — overweighting the supporting evidence and discounting the evidence to the contrary — as anyone in any other walk of life. In particular, the greatest difficulties await those who themselves have formulated ideas and invested tremendous efforts, often amount to years or even decades of time, in hypotheses that simply cannot explain the full suite of data that humanity has amassed. This applies even to the greatest minds in all of history.

• Albert Einstein could never…