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Al Gore was right.

Oh, don’t be like that. When a man is right, he’s right whether you like him, hate him, or feel intense apathy about him. A couple of years ago Gore published The Assault on Reason, and every day brings another example of People We’re Supposed to Take Seriously swinging another baseball bat at Reason’s head.

Take, for example, Jonah Lehrer’s “Trials and Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us,” in the January 2012 edition of Wired. Lehrer strings together some high profile examples of scientific theories turning out to be wrong, adds erudite-sounding invocations of philosophers like David Hume, and concludes that all scientific accounts of causation are just empty story-telling.

As an antidote, read the Wikipedia entry on Karl Popper. He’s the father of modern scientific epistemology, but somehow didn’t rate even a mention in Lehrer’s article. What you’ll learn is that in our search for truth, the best we’re able to manage is a collection of ideas nobody has managed to prove false.

That’s what science is — causal “stories” (they’re called theories). Some are new and have been subjected to just a few challenges. Others have been battle-tested over a span of decades or even centuries by large numbers of researchers, some brighter than anyone reading these words (not to mention the person writing them); a few brighter than everyone reading these words put together.

Fail to prove an idea wrong enough different times in enough different ways (fail to falsify it in Popper’s terminology) and scientists start to feel confident they’re on the right track.

Not certain, but confident, because it isn’t a certain process. Even when scientists get something right, “right” can turn out to be a special case of a theory that covers more ground. That’s how it turned out for Newton’s theory of gravity. It’s useful enough when you need to build, say, a building that doesn’t fall down, but not sufficient for something more complicated, like, say, a global positioning system.

Citing science’s limitations is easy, which has led the easily fooled to the foolish conclusion that we should ignore what the scientific method tells us — foolish because no one has offered an alternative that works anywhere near as well, let alone better.

It’s New Year’s Resolutions time and I have one for you. (Yes, I have some for myself too, but suggesting ways for other people to improve themselves is so much more fun …) It’s to foster a culture of honest inquiry … in the business culture you influence (KJR’s proper scope) and also in your social circles and family, if that isn’t too much to ask.

It’s harder than you might think, for two interconnected reasons: (1) All culture change starts with changes to your own behavior; and (2) we’re all wired to reach the wrong conclusion under a scarily wide variety of circumstances. For example:

Did you know that in the United States, the highest incidences of kidney cancer are found in small towns?

It’s true. What conclusion do you draw from this? Probably not that it has to be this way as a matter of pure, random chance, but that’s the actual explanation. Don’t believe me? Here’s another, equally true statement: The lowest incidences of kidney cancer are found in small towns.

The way randomness works is that small samples exhibit more variation than large samples. So large metropolitan areas … big samples of the U.S. population … will all have incidences of kidney cancer very close to the overall national mean. Small towns, each a small sample, will vary more widely, so some will have an incidence much lower than the national mean while others will have an incidence much higher.

Even professional statisticians get this sort of thing wrong if they aren’t on their guard for it, as is documented, along with about a zillion other places our ability to draw the correct conclusion falls by the wayside, by your must-read book for 2012 — Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.

The title comes from the author’s well-tested and thus-far not falsified theory that humans rely on two separate decision-making systems. One is quick, heuristic, error-prone, and so effortless we’re often unaware it’s even operating. The other is slow, requires significant effort and concentration, and takes proper stock of evidence and logic.

Do you want to encourage a culture of honest inquiry? It means engaging the slow, effortful system as much as you can. That requires an environment that provides enough time, and sufficiently few distractions, to allow it.

It will be an uphill battle, but one eminently worth fighting.

When I was a wee laddie, my mother decided to take a driving trip to New York one summer, so off we went — my brother Mike, Grandma Claire and me, with Mom at the wheel of the family Studebaker.

Dad, wisely avoiding the drive, joined us in New York.

“It’s your trip too,” she told us kids. “What would you like to see?” I was nonplussed, and had no answer. Brother Mike, never afflicted with nonplussedness, did: “Let’s visit Mad Magazine!” Mad, the bible of bratty (or wish-they-had-the-courage-to-be bratty) boys everywhere. The universal icon of irreverence throughout the world. The address that could be reached simply by pasting postage and Alfred E. Neuman’s picture on an envelope (once achieved by a sender who lived someplace or other in Australia). Mad Magazine — brilliant! But would they even let us into the headquarters of this storied publishing empire?

I remember little of the visit itself — a nondescript red brick building, a picture of Alfred E. Neuman on the mailbox outside, and a semi-dingy interior with inexpensive linoleum-topped desks. What I do remember clearly was that everyone at Mad Magazine, from its legendary publisher William M. Gaines on down, treated us like visiting royalty, seemingly as excited by our being there as Mike and I were.

Mad has fallen on hard times. Before it disappears altogether, IT leaders can glean some important insights, both from its success and its eventual decline. For example:

Visions can make themselves irrelevant. While Gaines’ vision of a magazine distinguished by iconoclasm, impertinence, and outrageousness (“Humor in a jugular vein”) has become irrelevant in a society in which Bart Simpson is considered mainstream, Mad was a major force in making irreverence acceptable. Whatever your vision, be alert to one of the hazards of success — the need to establish a new vision, rather than becoming irrelevant in your company.

Some employees deliver unique value. Treat them accordingly. Once a year, William M. Gaines took his core team of writers and cartoonists on a vacation to some exotic locale or other, for no other reason than that they were the reason Mad was so hugely popular. (Dick DeBartolo’s hobby on these trips was to insert himself into as many group photos of Japanese tourists as he could. I just thought you’d like to know.) All of your employees deliver important value. Some, however, deliver unique value and would be uniquely hard to replace. Find ways to recognize that unique value that don’t cause resentment among the rest of your staff. It’s a tricky balance to achieve. It’s also well worth the effort.

Have the courage to stand up for yourself and your organization. In the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Commission asked William M. Gaines to testify regarding Mad Magazine, and EC Comics which he also published. A member of the committee asked, ominously, how Gaines could justify his existence — he was encouraging the youth of America to read comic books instead of something worthwhile.

“Yes.” replied Gaines without flinching. “I’m encouraging them to read.” When, as often happens, other executives complain about investments in information technology whose value isn’t obvious, be just as clear and unflinching.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. The folks who wrote, drew, and published Mad were, in their own way, important, influential people. With millions of readers and international reputations, they could have been too busy for a family visiting from the Midwest. They weren’t. Instead, they were as excited to show us around as we were to be shown around, unaffectedly enthusiastic about what they did and how they did it.

To this day I’m convinced that attitude was a prerequisite to Mad‘s success, month after month. I’m equally convinced that the contagious attitude of self-importance that afflicts so many corporate executives is a major contributing factor to business failure.

Welcome visitors. You should be excited about what IT does. So should everyone else in IT. If someone is interested enough to ask for the nickel tour, shouldn’t everyone in IT be excited to show them around, explaining what goes on and who does it?

It’s a minor thing, but it does have value. Getting everyone in the habit of bragging about your organization is healthy. Not only that, but you never know.

Sometimes a simple tour can make an impression that lasts a lifetime.