In 1956 Alice Stewart published in The Lancet that X-raying pregnant women made childhood cancer more likely. Doctors kept doing it for about 25 more years.
That’s how Margaret Heffernan opens her TEDGlobal 2012 talk. But the hero of the story, for me, is George Kneale: Stewart’s statistician and her opposite in everything, who described his job as proving Dr. Stewart wrong. He hunted for data and models that would sink her. Every time he failed, she could be sure she was right.
That’s the thesis: good disagreement is how thinking moves forward, and the best thinking partners are not echo chambers. Meanwhile, in a survey she cites, 85% of executives admitted to worries at work they never dared raise. Openness alone doesn’t fix it: it takes skill, habit and moral courage, both to disagree and to be disagreed with.
Who’s your Kneale?
https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree