It has been estimated that, from the beginning of civilization-5,ooo years ago or more-until 2003, humanity created a total of five exabytes(billion gigabytes) of information. From 2003 to 2010, we created this amount every two gig days. By 2013, we will be doing so every ten minutes, exceeding within hours all the information currently contained in all the books ever writter So it isn 't that we need more knowledge; it is that we need to distinguish between what we know and what we don't know through what Firestein calls controlled neglect". Researchers must selectively ignore vast quantities of facts and data that block creative solutions and focus on a narrow range of possibilities "To make discoveries, researchers need to look beyond the facts Ignorance includes an important discussion about scientific errors and their propagation in textbooks. I admit that I passed one on in my last book, The Believing Brain(Times Books, 2011): I repeated as gospel the ''that the human brain contains about 1oo billion neurons Firestein reports that it is actually around 8o billion, and that the number of glial cells is an order of magnitude smallerthan most textbooks state The neural spike'recorded by neuroscientists as a fundamental unit of brain activity firestein reminds us is an artefact of our measuring devices and ignores other forms of neural activity. Even the famous and widely printed tongue map, which shows sweet flavours sensed on the tip of the tongue bitter on the back and salt and sour on the sides is wrong -the result of a mistranslation of a German physiology paper. These and other errors arise as a result of our lack of scepticism towards the knowledge we have"It has been estimated that, from the beginning of civilization —5,000 years ago or more — until 2003, humanity created a total of five exabytes (billion gigabytes) of information. From 2003 to 2010, we created this amount every two days. By 2013, we will be doing so every ten minutes, exceeding within hours all the information currently contained in all the books ever written. So it isn't that we need more knowledge; it is that we need to distinguish between what we know and what we don't know, through what Firestein calls “controlled neglect”. Researchers must selectively ignore vast quantities of facts and data that block creative solutions, and focus on a narrow range of possibilities. "To make discoveries, researchers need to look beyond the facts.” Ignorance includes an important discussion about scientific errors and their propagation in textbooks. I admit that I passed one on in my last book, The Believing Brain (Times Books, 2011): I repeated as gospel the 'fact' that the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons. Firestein reports that it is actually around 80 billion, and that the number of glial cells is an order of magnitude smaller than most textbooks state. The 'neural spike' recorded by neuroscientists as a fundamental unit of brain activity, Firestein reminds us, is an artefact of our measuring devices and ignores other forms of neural activity. Even the famous and widely printed 'tongue map', which shows sweet flavours sensed on the tip of the tongue, bitter on the back and salt and sour on the sides, is wrong — the result of a mistranslation of a German physiology paper. These and other errors arise as a result of our lack of scepticismtowards the knowledge we have