"Let theory guide your observations [otherwise one] might as well go into a gravel pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours."
Darwin, 1903
Cited in: Lawrence P., 2016 "Francis Crick: a singular approach to scientific discovery"
"Darwin’s result was due in large measure to his working method, which violated all my rules for misery and particularly emphasized a backward twist in that he always gave priority attention to evidence tending to disconfirm whatever cherished and hard-won theory he already had."
"In contrast, most people early achieve and later intensify a tendency to process new and disconfirming information so that any original conclusion remains intact."
As written by Charlie Munger, cited here: https://fs.blog/charles-darwin-thinker/
Charles Darwin: "I had, also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones."
As quoted in https://fs.blog/charles-darwin-thinker/