编者按:有句古话说：“如果你没犯错误，就说明你没有尽力。”所以，勇往直前，去犯错误吧。然后学习、成长，最后成功。Good Mistakes有益的错误It&#39s good to make mistake, and here is why.First of all, mistakes are a clear sign that you are trying new things. It&#39s always good to try new things because when you are trying new things you are growing. If you never t

Admitting guilt承认错误Giving advice is a lot easier than receiving it.给予建议比接受建议更容易。Telling someone that he was wrong is a lot easier than admitting that you made a mistake.当然告诉别人他是错的比承认自己犯错误更容易。Writing a timeout everyday is not easy but trying to live up to all of my timeout goals and ideas, gosh!每天停下来

Now I&#39ve been sort of banging on about this for the last couple of months,在过去的几个月里，我反复在讨论这个问题，and people sometimes say to me, &quotWell Tim, it&#39s kind of obvious. Obviously trial and error is very important.有时有人跟我说：“提姆，这不是很显然么，很显然试验和排除错误很重要，Obviously experimentation is very important. Now why

Five thousand products -- that&#39s still nothing.5000个产品，这还没什么。Five thousand products -- imagine counting every product category in Cesar Hidalgo&#39s data.5000个产品，想象我们来数塞萨尔·伊达尔戈数据中的每个产品的目录。Imagine you had one second per product category.想象你每一秒钟，听到一个产品种类的名字In about the length of this session, you w

From Kansas, I moved on to lovely Arizona,离开堪萨斯后，我搬到美丽的亚利桑纳州，where I taught in Flagstaff for a number of years, this time with middle school students.我在Flagstaff小镇教了几年书，这次是教初中的学生。Luckily, I didn&#39t have to teach them American government.幸运的是，我这次不用教美国政治。Could teach them the more exciting topic of g

In the time that passes between when I was a kid in high school and when I started teaching,在过去的这几年间，从我还在念高中到我开始教书的时候，we really see the advent of the Internet.我们真的亲眼目睹网络的发展。Right about the time that the Internet gets going as an educational tool,就在网络开始作为教学用的工具发展的时候，I take off from Wisconsin and move

And it wasn&#39t because of my attending he was a doll.而这也不是因为我的主治；他人非常好。He talked to the family, and I&#39m quite sure that he smoothed things over and made sure that I didn&#39t get sued.他和那家人好好的谈过。我确定他为了确保我没有被控告而替我打了圆场。And I kept asking myself these questions. Why didn&#39t I ask my attending?但我仍

Fast-forward to Pennsylvania, where I find myself today.快进到宾州，我现在住的地方。I teach at the Science Leadership Academy,我在科学领导学院教书，which is a partnership school between the Franklin Institute and the school district of Philadelphia.它是富兰克林学院和费城学区协同的合办的。We are a nine through 12 public school, but we do school

It&#39s a system in which there are two kinds of physicians -- those who make mistakes and those who don&#39t,在这个制度当中，只有两种人 -- 犯错的不犯错的，those who can&#39t handle sleep deprivation and those who can, those who have lousy outcomes and those who have great outcomes.可以调适睡眠不足的和不可以忍受的，以及那些有着糟糕的结果和有着优秀的结果的。

And you sometimes need to be shocked out of that.而有的时候我们需要把这种感觉抖掉。Now I&#39m not going to pretend that this is easy. It isn&#39t easy. It&#39s incredibly painful.现在我不想假装这是件容易的事情。这并不容易。这会是个痛苦的过程。And since I started talking about this subject and researching this subject,自从我开始谈论这个话题，研究这个话题，I&#39ve bee

So Archie splits the men under his care as best he can into two equal groups.所以阿奇就把他的病人平分成两组人。他给其中的一半维他命C。他给另一半维他命B12。He gives half of them vitamin C. He gives half of them vitamin B12.他给其中的一半维他命C。他给另一半维他命B12。He very carefully and meticulously notes his results in an exercise book.他非常小心谨慎把他的结果记录在一个练

And two days later I came to do my next emergency shift, and that&#39s when my chief asked to speak to me quietly in her office.两天后，又轮到我在急诊室值班。那时我的主任要我去她的办公室里私下谈谈。And she said the three words: Do you remember?她说了那三个字： 记得吗？&quotDo you remember that patient you saw with the sore throat?&quot“记得吗？那位你看过

And that was the message that I absorbed when I was in med school.这就是我在医学院时得到的信息。I was an obsessive compulsive student.我是一个有着强迫症倾向的学生。In high school, a classmate once said that Brian Goldman would study for a blood test.在中学时，有个同学曾经说布莱恩·高德曼会为了血液测验复习。And so I did. And I studied in my little garret at

I have been teaching for a long time, and in doing so have acquired a body of knowledge about kids我从事教师工作很长一段时间了，而在我教书的过程当中我学了很多关于孩子与学习的知识，and learning that I really wish more people would understand about the potential of students.我非常希望更多人可以了解学生的潜能。In 1931, my grandmother -- bottom left for you guy

But each time, they were gnawing at me, eating at me.但每当我想到这两起病例，那种感觉都会折磨啃噬我。And I&#39d like to be able to say to you that my worst mistakes only happened in the first five years of practice as many of my colleagues say, which is total B.S.而我也希望我可以告诉你，我造成的最严重的错误只发生在了我开始行医的前五年，像我众多的同事所称一般。但这完全是扯淡。Som

Now let&#39s take this back into my world of medicine where I&#39m a lot more comfortable,现在让我们回到我的世界，医疗领域。这个领域我比较熟悉，or perhaps a bit less comfortable after what I&#39m going to talk to you about.但我接下来要说的却让我有些困扰。Suppose you have appendicitis and you&#39re referred to a surgeon who&#39s batting 400 o

So this is the complexity of the world that surrounds us.所以这就是我们所处环境的复杂性。This perhaps is why we find the God complex so tempting.这也许正是为什么我们发现“万能神力”这么有吸引力的原因。We tend to retreat and say, &quotWe can draw a picture, we can post some graphs, we get it, we understand how this works.&quot我们喜欢退一步说：“我们可以来画一

It is dangerous for patients to recover from heart attacks at home.让心脏病人在家康复是危险的。They should be in hospital.&quot And there&#39s this uproar,他们应该留在医院里。”这引起了一片哗然，and all the doctors start pounding the table and saying, &quotWe always said you were unethical, Archie.医生们开始拍桌子，说道：“我们一直说阿奇，你这样做是不道德的。You&

Until then, until then I&#39m going to keep banging on about trial and error and why we should abandon the God complex.到那时候，到那时候，我会继续讨论测试和排除错误这个话题，以及为什么我们需要抛弃“万能神力”的态度。Because it&#39s so hard to admit our own fallibility. It&#39s so uncomfortable.因为我们很难承认我们自己是很容易犯错的。这令人感到很不舒服。And Archie Cochrane und

I think we have to do something about a piece of the culture of medicine that has to change.我觉得在当今的医学文化中，有一部份文化必须要开始改变。And I think it starts with one physician, and that&#39s me.而这个改变可以从一个医生开始，那就是我。And maybe I&#39ve been around long enough that I can afford to give away some of my false prestige to

What they need is an environment to be able to do that.他们只是需要一个场合来吐露心声。What they need is a redefined medical culture.他们需要的是一个重新定义的医学文化。And it starts with one physician at a time.从一位又一位个别的医生开始。The redefined physician is human, knows she&#39s human, accepts it, isn&#39t proud of making mistakes,重新定义过的

How do you do it? Well you have this great big tank full of liquid detergent.你怎么做呢？ 你有这么一大池子的液体清洁剂。You pump it at a high pressure through a nozzle. You create a spray of detergent.你用高压将它压过一个喷嘴，你制造了清洁剂喷雾。Then the spray dries. It turns into powder. It falls to the floor.喷雾干燥后就成了粉末，掉在地板上。You scoop it u

And that wasn&#39t a difficult diagnosis to make.这不是一个困难的诊断。I made it and I set to work treating her.作出诊断后我开始着手帮她治疗。I gave her aspirin. I gave her medications to relieve the strain on her heart.我开给了她阿司匹林，并给了她一些可以减轻她心脏负担的药物。I gave her medications that we call diuretics, water pills, to get her to pee

Well let me give you an example.让我来给你们一个例子。Imagine for a moment that, instead of Tim Harford in front of you, there was Hans Rosling presenting his graphs.你们想象一下，现在如果站在你们面前的不是我，而是汉斯·罗斯林在展示他的图表。You know Hans: the Mick Jagger of TED.你们知道汉斯： TED的米克·贾格尔。And he&#39d be showing you these amazing statistic

It&#39s the Second World War. A German prison camp.这是二战期间，一个德国集中营。And this man, Archie Cochrane, is a prisoner of war and a doctor, and he has a problem.这个人，阿奇·卡克伦，是战俘也是一名医生，他遇到了一个问题。The problem is that the men under his care are suffering from an excruciating and debilitating condition that Archie

There are a million pictures that I could click through here,我有上百万张照片可以展示，and had to choose carefully -- this is one of my favorites -- of students learning,可我得小心的选择--好，这是我最喜欢的一张--学生正在学习的照片，of what learning can look like in a landscape where we let go of the idea that kids have to come to school to

So I signed the discharge papers, and an ambulance came, paramedics came to take her home.我在出院单上签了名， 一辆救护车来后急救人员将她送回了家。And I went back to my work on the wards.之后我回到了我在诊所的工作。All the rest of that day, that afternoon, I had this kind of gnawing feeling inside my stomach.在接下来的一天中， 那天下午， 我的肠胃有着一种翻滚的感觉。Bu

My students produced these info-graphics我的学生们制作了这些信息图表，as a result of a unit that we decided to do at the end of the year responding to the oil spill.结果是我们决定以这个汇报作为我们学年的总结报告，内容是回应漏油事件。I asked them to take the examples that we were seeing of the info-graphics that existed in a lot of mass media,我要求他们

I&#39m not even telling you the story because I think we should be running more carefully controlled randomized trials in all aspects of public policy,我跟你说这个故事也不是因为我认为，我们在公共政策的各个方面，做随机抽样试验时，应该更小心，although I think that would also be completely awesome.虽然我觉得这样做真的很好。I&#39m telling you this story becaus

And I was shocked and shaken to the core.我震惊不已， 吓得不得了。And I went through this roller coaster, because after they stabilized her, she went to the intensive care unit, and I hoped against hope that she would recover.之后我的心情便像是做着云霄飞车一般， 因为当他们将她的情况稳定下来后， 便将她送进了加护病房， 我在绝望中希望她能够醒过来。And over the next two or