Quotes About Scientists

Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work — whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty — is the great task of our generation as a whole.

The problem of an efficient group structure alone is enough to absorb anyone's interest. An organization of a committee of scientists or a panel of script writers is far from what it could be. But we lack control in the world at large to investigate more efficient structures. Here, on the contrary, here we begin to understand and build the Superorganism. We can construct groups of artists and scientists who will act as smoothly and efficiently as champion football teams.

Some scientists claim - although these claims are contentious - that they can form deadly isomers with simple X-rays and that hafnium can multiply the power of these X-rays to an astounding degree, converting them into gamma rays up to 250 times more potent than the X-rays.

If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.

Semantics matters. Because the word cause is commonly taken to mean direct cause, climate scientists, trying to be precise, have too often shied away from attributing causation of a particular hurricane, drought, or fire to global warming.

As neither of these two great research scientists was able to find the solution to the mystery, it is small wonder that none of their contemporaries were able to do so either.

The most wonderful discovery made by scientists is science itself.

Scientists need to be prepared to engage, and the best people to engage with are students, ideally from primary school because there's no question that their capacity to work out complex things is extremely good.

America's greatest long-term influence on China comes from playing host to the thousands of students who come from China each year, some of the ablest Chinese scholars and scientists. They will be the most powerful agents for change in China.

It has only been within my lifetime that asteroids have been considered a credible threat to our planet. And since then, there's been a focused effort underway to discover and catalog these objects. I am lucky enough to be part of this effort. I'm part of a team of scientists that use NASA's NEOWISE telescope.

People want to protect the territory that they have, and they're very threatened by change. That's not true for all of scientists, but you know, fortunately, the scientific community moves forward in a conservative fashion.

Throughout history, when societies have been faced with big challenges, they've put their best people on them. During the Space Race, American and Russian scientists, engineers, astronauts and cosmonauts pushed the bounds of what was possible and landed men on the moon.

Admittedly, scientific authority is not distributed evenly throughout the body of scientists; some distinguished members of the profession predominate over others of a more junior standing.

Tragically, policymakers have thrown horrendous amounts of taxpayer money needed for other purposes at solving an unsubstantiated emergency. It is scandalous that so many climate scientists who fully knew that Al Gore had no basis for his irresponsible claims stood mute.

A single human brain has about a hundred million nerve cells... and a computer program that throws light on the mind/brain problem will have to incorporate the deepest insights of biologists, nerve scientists, psychologists, physiologists, linguists, social scientists, and even philosophers.

don't know. I'm just telling you what I can observe, an essential skill of scientists and con men alike.

It must be admitted that scientists today take little interest in philosophy of science.... It is not an indication that philosophical issues are no longer relevant. Rather, it is a consequence of the increasingly specialized nature of science, and of the polarization between the sciences and humanities that characterizes the modern education system.

So part of the job of philosophy of science is to question assumptions that scientists take for granted.

That being said, it must be admitted that many scientists today take little interest in philosophy of science, and know little about it. While this is unfortunate, it is not an indication that philosophical issues are no longer relevant. Rather it is a consequence of the increasingly specialized nature of science, and of the polarization between the sciences and the humanities that characterizes much modern education.

In October 2015 Emily Temple-Wood, one of the site's long-standing editors, told the Atlantic magazine that she had identified almost 4400 female scientists who met Wikipedia's inclusion standards but did not have a page. For years the physicist Donna Strickland was not deemed notable enough for an entry. She finally got her place in Wikipedia on the day she won the Nobel Prize. Surely that cannot be what it takes to be remembered? No man is held to such a standard.

The Big Bang Theory: When geeky scientists can be main characters in a hit prime time series, you know there's hope for the world.

And it is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best.

Competent scientists do not doubt the hockey stick because it does not have enough publications to back it up. They doubt it because it has been shown to be based on incorrect math and inadequate data.

Furthermore, the scientists who actually collected the tree-ring data that Mann cannibalized insist they're primarily an indicator of CO2 fertilization, not temperature.