I guess I'm just an ass for saying I told you so when this happens, but I firmly believe you need to let people make their own mistakes before they learn, both how to solve the problem, and to gain a begrudged respect.
Mistakes happen, and a culture that insists too hard that "mistakes shouldn't happen, and so we can't be seen making mistakes" is harmful toward engineering.
How should their performance be evaluated, if not by the rote number of mistakes that can be pinned onto the person, and their combined impact? (Was that the question?)
It's not coddling as much as professional courtesy. Mistakes are often brought up at conferences and in peer review, but most scientists within a specific research area try to be on good terms with one another and don't see value in publicly shaming colleagues for their mistakes.
If one human makes the mistake, it's probably because it's a mistake that humans trained in this field are likely to make. Mistakes are not independent in this sense. Also, the number of humans capable of an in-depth analysis of the result is small, and they've mostly all got the same training, so if there's a subtle mistake, it's one to which they are all susceptible.
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