During graduate school, my fellow students and I went through an academic gauntlet called the “preliminary oral exam.” In our version of this rite of passage, students made a brief presentation of their research proposals, which was followed by two hours of questions about any discipline-related topics asked by a five-member faculty panel. As we students passed through this harrowing ordeal, sharing notes about what happened and the supposed purpose of the exams, we discovered one common experience. During the interrogation we were all forced to say “I don’t know” many times. In fact, to try to bluff through an answer brought down a storm of complicated follow-up questions that ultimately led to the admission of ignorance. In short, we learned that when we didn’t know, it was best to say “I don’t know” right up front.