A scientific institution, in contrast, gained authority because it had strong self-correcting mechanisms that exposed and rectified the errors of the institution itself. It was these self-correcting mechanisms, not the technology of printing, that were the engine of the scientific revolution. the scientific revolution was launched by the discovery of ignorance The scientific project starts by rejecting the fantasy of infallibility and proceeding to construct an information network that takes error to be inescapable. The trademark of science is not merely skepticism but self-skepticism, and at the heart of every scientific institution we find a strong self-correcting mechanism. These mechanisms start with the realization that humans are fallible and corruptible. But instead of despairing of humans and looking for a way to bypass them, the institution actively seeks its own errors and corrects them. The most celebrated moments in the history of science are precisely those moments when accepted wisdom is overturned and new theories are born. The willingness to admit major institutional errors contributes to the relatively fast pace at which science is developing.