Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

Land’s remark frames science less as a body of facts than as a disciplined practice of self-correction. The central danger is not merely being deceived by others, but deceiving oneself—through wishful thinking, confirmation bias, or attachment to a favored idea. “Method” implies procedures that force contact with reality: testable predictions, careful measurement, replication, and openness to being wrong. Coming from an inventor-entrepreneur, the line also underscores a practical ethic: breakthroughs and products depend on resisting seductive but unsupported beliefs. In this view, science is intellectual humility made operational—tools designed to prevent confidence from outrunning evidence.