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The real point of honor … is not to be always right. It is to dare to propose new ideas, and then to check them.

— Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

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The real point of honor [for a scientist] is not to be always right. It is to dare to propose new ideas, and then to check them.

In our days, when we are spoilt with exceedingly complex toys, such as nuclear reactors or synchrotron sources, I particularly like to describe experiments of this Franklin style to my students.

The final lines are not mine: they come from an experiment on soft matter, after Boudin… An English translation might run like this

A dense film of a conventional surfactant is quite impermeable. On the other hand, a dense film of Janus grains always has some interstices between the grains, and allows for chemical exchange between the two sides; "the skin can breathe". This may possibly be of some practical interest.

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