If we will not admit our own mistakes, can we at least learn from others'?

It has been said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it (https://tinyurl.com/2v5pb762 ). Freud wrote of "repetition compulsion" (https://tinyurl.com/5ay38tzv ), his idea that if we do not resolve our unconscious conflicts, we will not only fail to learn from our mistakes, but we will repeat the same mistakes over and over because these errors arise from underlying conflict and are not truly "accidents."

?I noted earlier (https://tinyurl.com/8nytwfed ), a new book by my friend Steve Austad "To Err Is Human, but To Admit It is Not." I agree with both statements embedded in the title. But even if we will not admit our mistakes, can we at least learn from others’? How we can best facilitate that learning.

?I recently explored Saunders Springs Nature Preserve trails (https://tinyurl.com/2d9a4spr ). I came upon these sweet muscadines, known to anyone who has lived in the south and walked the trails. These robustly flavorful "industrial strength" grapes have skin so thick that many people just chew the grape and spit the skin, rich in resveratrol (https://www.ajevonline.org/content/47/1/57 ).

Resveratrol is found in the skins of red grapes and some other plants. Early in the 21st century, enthusiasm was high that resveratrol might have anti-aging properties (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.301.5637.1165 ; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8289612/ ). Careers, publications, companies, and products were launched. The postulated antiaging effect of resveratrol involves the molecule SIRT1. Yet, now controversy exists (https://tinyurl.com/dcjywv9c ). ?

What seems a supranormative number of publications on the topic have been retracted (https://tinyurl.com/2p8tcwhp ). But not all. Doubt remains to this date among some as to whether resveratrol (and SIRT1) has been convincingly shown to play an important role in health in general, in aging in particular, or whether it could potentially produce important effects if administered under the right circumstances and dose.

Opinions differ widely as to what we know, what has been shown, and how strong the research is (https://tinyurl.com/4hmjep6w ). What can we learn from this? Were mistakes made (https://tinyurl.com/7fva7jx5 )? Certainly, it appears to be so in the papers of now deceased Dr. Das that to the best of the field's ability to determine were produced with scientific misconduct (https://tinyurl.com/bdf3ac56 ). This taints the whole field.

Has doubt been heaped unduly on other papers in this area because of an unfair ‘guilt by association’? How did Dr. Das publish so many papers before the problems were detected? How do we prevent such large-scale misconduct in the future?

On the other side, just as "lack of evidence for an effect is not evidence for lack of an effect" so too are bad evidence, weak evidence, and fraudulent evidence for an effect not evidence for lack of an effect.

We must minimize errors, obfuscation, and breaches of integrity in science to be able to trust those findings of science that are genuinely trustworthy. We know that to err is human, we accept that to admit it is not, but can we at least learn from it?

?What can we learn from the controversy around resveratrol so that we can focus on the science qua science around the truth of propositions and not become mired in doubts brought on by sloppy or fraudulent actors?

?‘In vino veritas’ has a much better ring to it than does ‘repetition compulsion’.