Monkeys & Moral Judgement

Today in lab we dropped a small stuffed monkey off the roof, in the name of science.

An excerpt from the lab manual:

Your temptation to compare your results with the book value as an evaluation of your measurement, without separate accuracy estimates, is a universal temptation toward intellectual corruption*. If you must do it, at least be aware of your folly in so doing! Think also what it implies for science as a liberal art.

*This statement, a relic of past editions of this manual, is criticized as being too moralistic. The problem remains, among all of us.

Sometimes this place is equal parts mind-blowingly awesome and "what?"