Scientific Process Quotes

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”
― Michael Crichton

“I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
― Michael Crichton

“Science, however, is never conducted as a popularity contest, but instead advances through testable, reproducible, and falsifiable theories.”
― Michio Kaku

“Scientific advancement carries risk,” Kohler argued. “It always has. Space programs, genetic research, medicine—they all make mistakes. Science needs to survive its own blunders, at any cost. For everyone’s sake.”
Vittoria was amazed at Kohler’s ability to weigh moral issues with scientific detachment. His intellect seemed to be the product of an icy divorce from his inner spirit. “You think CERN is so critical to the earth’s future that we should be immune from moral responsibility?”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“People with a scientific mindset are analytical, open-minded, flexible and have the capacity to answer questions. They are basically focused on what they do not know, and only exceptionally on what they do know.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“The serious scientific public trusted him implicitly and consequently had no need to read him. If those people were to start getting critical, no further progress would be possible. They would spend a whole year over every page.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“Sie findet den Ausdruck als gemeinsame Verehrung eines Ideals, des Ideals objektiver Wahrheit, Klarheit und Genauigkeit. Sie besteht aus dem Glauben, daß Verehrtes erst in weiter, vielleicht unendlich weiter Zukunft erreichbar sei. Aus der Lobpreisung sich seinem Dienste aufzuopfern. Aus einem bestimmten Heroenkult und einer bestimmten Tradition. Dies wäre der Grundton der gemeinsamen Stimmung, in der sich das naturwissenschaftliche Denkkollektiv auslebt. Kein Eingeweihter wird behapten, das wissenschaftliche Denken sei gefühlsfrei.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv.

“Because Control knew that belief in a scientific process only took you so far. The ziggurats of illogic erected by your average domestic terrorist as he or she bought the fertiliser or made a detonator took on their own teetering momentum and power. When those towers crashed to the earth, they still existed whole in the perpetrator’s mind, and everyone else’s too – just for different reasons.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority

“People often assume that science is only about empirical research - that it's merely about facts and figures, which happens to be nowhere near the truth. Facts are the fundamental building blocks of science, but bringing those facts together to have an insight of a certain phenomenon requires a rational, conscientious and creative mind. It's only through rigorous analysis and observation, as well as, creative contemplation, of the empirical evidence, i.e. facts, discovered through decades of research, that we can understand a certain phenomenon. Science cannot exist without empirical evidence, but evidence alone can't take science ahead and upwards, for that, we need some rather naïve and conscientious minds who can pierce through the evidence in order to have a practical insight of the big picture of a certain phenomenon. In short, there's more to science than facts and figures. Think of facts and figures as bricks and cement, and science or scientific understanding as a building. Without the vision of the architect, it's impossible to construct the building no matter how much bricks and cement you have.”
― Abhijit Naskar, All For Acceptance

“Think of facts and figures as bricks and cement, and science or scientific understanding as a building. Without the vision of the architect, it's impossible to construct the building no matter how much bricks and cement you have.”
― Abhijit Naskar, All For Acceptance

“Only the man’s greed and scientific development is responsible for earth’s degradation of environment and ecology.”
― Dr. Ashok Anand

“Science is neither boastful nor bashful,
Science stands dutybound, forever mindful.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science