I was sitting in the Common Room of the Princeton math department, reading a journal article and minding my own business. A few other grad students were hanging around. A fellow student, whom I'll call C, bounded in and announced to his friends that he had found a major flaw in an important and influential work by a famous Princeton professor, in a paper that had been published many years earier in the Annals of Mathematics.
They heartily congratulated him, gleefully discussed how famous this would make C, and suggested ways to celebrate.
I looked up. From my prior experience with C, I thought it extremely unlikely that he had found a major mistake in a high-profile paper that had been around for awhile and had been subject to extensive scrutiny.
My father was a journalist, and he had trained me from a young age in critical thinking skills. He taught me that I shouldn't believe that something is true just because someone said it was true. Be skeptical. Though it took me awhile to learn to be skeptical of famous professors, I was quite ready to be skeptical of C.
I asked to see the paper, and I asked C to point to the mistake. It was near the beginning. I read the line in question, and realized that C had thought that (a+b)2 was a2 + ab + b2, rather than the correct a2 + 2ab + b2.
I took C aside and gently discussed it with him. He agreed that it was his mistake, not the famous professor's. I was pleased that I had succeeded in telling him in a way that allowed him to save face with his friends. I don't always manage to do that.
So what is my superpower? Bullshit detection.