>One of the major values of this List is it being a venue for the sharing of
actual data, rather than generalized anecdotes, opinions, or sales pitches
for what one is sure "should" work.  We can learn as much from
carefully-monitored failures as we can from consistent success (meaning
that something works for more than a single season). 

Would you have any scientific data to support this, or does it fall into the category of generalized anecdotes, opinions, or sales pitches?

I ask this because you contradict all the scientific data I am familiar with.  The situation you describe is a matter of economics, which is one of the social sciences.  The valuations can be quantified.

You will always learn more from success than from failures.  Failures don't pay the bills, and they exhaust capital that could have been used for more productive purposes.  Enough failures, and you go bankrupt and can't continue learning whatever you're studying.

With success, you learn what to do to continue being successful.  With failure, you learn what not to do, but you do not learn how to become successful.  Something with a negative value does not have equal value to something with a positive value.  Success will always be more valuable than failures.

There is only one situation in which I believe someone can argue that success and failures have equal values.  That is in a socialist system in which there are no individual losses or gains.  (ie, when you are spending someone else's money and not your own.)

Success breeds success.  If you want to be successful, find someone successful and try to copy the things they do good.

I also believe that generalized anecdotes can be immensely valuable or very costly.  Anecdotal evidence can also be quantified using economics.  The proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes.

Or is economics a science that is discouraged on Bee-L?

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