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Articles on Scientific discovery

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Successfully innovating requires business executives to create an innovation-focused company culture, to engage strategically beneficial innovation practices and to avoid those that only work for certain industries. (Shutterstock)

3 ways for businesses to fuel innovation and drive performance

Innovative companies engage in many highly touted best practices. While they can enhance competitiveness, some are more important than others and need a strategy for effective implementation.
Scientists can make mistakes, but it’s important to keep an open mind and curious approach when conducting research. (Shutterstock)

In science, it’s better to be curious than correct

Mistakes can be made during scientific research with devastating effects. Keeping an open mind to the possibility of error and correcting immediately can make the difference between life and death.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin arrives for the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences awards on Dec. 12, 2013, in Moffett Field, Calif. The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences recognizes excellence in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and extending human life. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Could this be the year for a Canadian Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences?

The nomination deadline for science’s most lucrative prize – the Breakthrough Prize – is looming. Why has no Canadian ever received this prize, despite groundbreaking discoveries?
Kayentapus ambrokholohali footprints belong to an animal of about 26 feet long, dwarfing all the life around it. Theropod image adapted by Lara Sciscio, with permission, from an illustration by Scott Hartman

Meet the giant dinosaur that roamed southern Africa 200 million years ago

Until this discovery, theropod dinosaurs were thought to be considerably smaller, at three to five metres in body length, during the Early Jurassic.
The manuscript of ‘Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’ shows the words ‘does this apple fall?’ Newton’s curiosity about the falling piece of fruit helped him develop the theory of gravity. (AP Photo/Lucy Young)

No new Einsteins to emerge if science funding snubs curiosity

Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein would have bridled under today’s research funding bureaucracy. It’s time to allow scientists to indulge their curiosity again.
The author’s backpack was hiding this almost complete therapsid fossil. Was finding it all down to luck? Julien Benoit

When it comes to big finds, scientists need more than just luck and chance

Good science isn’t rooted in chance. It’s based on people with expertise being in the right place at the right time, equipped with enough knowledge to know what they’re looking at.
New forms of life are discovered in high-tech ways that leave yesterday’s natural history collections in the dust. Detective image via www.shutterstock.com.

The modern, molecular hunt for the world’s biodiversity

Forget the pith helmet and butterfly net. Discovering biodiversity now is much more about metagenomics and the 0’s and 1’s of digital databases.
The BICEP2 telescope at twilight at the South Pole. The supporting data for the inflation of the universe have also gone off into the sunset. Steffen Richter, Harvard University

Failure in real science is good – and different from phony controversies

Last March, the BICEP2 collaboration announced that they had used a microwave telescope at the South Pole to detect primordial gravitational waves. These tiny ripples in spacetime would be the first proof…
Things can and do go wrong when some announcements are mad ahead of time. Flickr/Narshada

The risks of blowing your own trumpet too soon on research

UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? Today a cautionary tale of why you should be careful of some new announcements made…

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