The Perils of Ignoring Floppy Bunny Ears: How Focus Can Lead to Failure

Being Overly Focused Makes Us Miss Some Great Things

In 1954, the researcher Lewis Thomas hit an impasse while studying rheumatic fever. He was injecting rabbits with an enzyme that should have mimicked the fever’s symptoms. Instead, he got something else: four hours after the injections, the rabbits’ ears began curling at the tips; 18 hours in, they were completely wilted, flopping at the sides of their heads like tired flower petals. Thomas’s findings in the changes to the…