Blogger Sarah Braley now questions everything author and keynote speaker Jonah Lehrer says, because he was unable to back up a statistic she challenged after hearing him deliver his keynote speech.
I suspect she was more turned off by his lack of concern over accuracy and dismissiveness when challenged than she was by his making a suspect claim. To quote Stephen Covey,
“People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.”
I like to believe Covey is right, because I’ve made some very interesting and illuminating mistakes in my career, and expect I will make many more. I’d like to be forgiven. We all were. And more often than not, we all are – if we don’t compound our mistakes of the mind with mistakes of the heart.