A Lesson from the Microscope: Why Following the Crowd Can Make You Miss the Truth
Something happened in my life, and I’ll forever take it as a lesson. During one of my practicals in histology, I was looking into the microscope and I was seeing… let’s just say something. What everyone else said they saw was stratified squamous epithelial tissue. But what I saw was a completely different tissue. No matter how many times I adjusted the microscope, what I was seeing didn’t match what we had been taught. I honestly thought my eyes were the problem because the tissue I saw wasn’t even making sense. When the lecturer walked into our group, he checked the microsc ope and picked three people to name the tissue. I was among them. The other two answered stratified squamous epithelial tissue. I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Sir, I saw nothing,” so I followed the crowd. The lecturer laughed and gave us a side glance—one that felt like he was calling us fools. He then went on to explain that our slide was compromised and that there was actually nothing in the microscope. Af...