Quotes About Scientists

Yet in many cases, the social components were the dominant system drivers. It was often said, for example, that climate change was caused by increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Scientists understood that those greenhouse gases were accumulating because of the activities of human beings—deforestation and fossil fuel combustion—yet they rarely said that the cause was people, and their patterns of conspicuous consumption.

After the Cold War, most scientists were relieved to be freed of the burdens of secrecy and misrepresentation, but Seitz, Singer, and Nierenberg continued to act as if the Cold War had not ended.

Outside their domains of expertise, scientists may be no more well informed than ordinary people. Indeed, they may be less so as their intense training in one area can lead them to be undereducated in others.

some people have been attacking not just the message, but the messenger. Ever since scientists first began to explain the evidence that our climate was warming—and that human activities were probably to blame—people have been questioning the data, doubting the evidence, and attacking the scientists who collect and explain it. And no one has been more brutally—or more unfairly—attacked than Ben Santer.

And this brings us to the crux of our story, the pivot around which these diverse actors came together. The link that unites the tobacco industry, conservative think tanks, and the scientists in our story is the defense of the free market.

The "real" agenda of environmentalists—and the scientists who provided the data on which they relied—was to destroy capitalism and replace it with some sort of worldwide utopian Socialism—or perhaps Communism. That echoed a common right-wing refrain in the early 1990s: that environmental regulation was the slippery slope to Socialism. In 1992, columnist George Will encapsulated this view, saying that environmentalism was a "green tree with red roots.

You know, in the Soviet Union they used to have a tradition of ordering scientists to change their studies to conform with the ideology then acceptable to the state. And scientists in the rest of the world found that laughable as well as tragic.

In August 1939 Albert Einstein, in contact with a group of scientists who had recently emigrated from Europe, sent a letter to Roosevelt warning of the need to exploit the explosive potential of fission before the Germans did.

With an ever-increasing number of fast-moving neutrons flinging themselves about, splitting atoms at an exponential rate, scientists could create what was called a chain reaction—and generate enormous quantities of energy. Which prompted the obvious question: To what purpose?

The 1918 influenza pandemic famously had a W-shaped curve. The very young and the very old were at increased risk, but there was also elevated risk in the middle of the age distribution, spiking in patients around twenty-five years old. Scientists have been studying this for decades but are still unsure why it happened.

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations, officials, thousands of scientists, and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet, oftentimes losing war on the food production front.

Though I did not write about neurofeedback in detail, I trained in it, and learned an immense amount about changing the brain from these neurofeedback scientists and clinicians, in supervision, in courses or through their writings: John Finnick, Moshe Perl, Sebern Fisher, Ed Hamlin, Lynda Thompson, Michael Thompson, Len Ochs, and Jaclyn Gisburne.

I have a disdain," he says, "for complicated fancy equipment because it takes a lot of time to learn how to use, and I'm suspicious when the distance between the raw data and the final conclusion is too long. It gives you plenty of opportunity to massage that data, and human beings are notoriously susceptible to self-deception, whether scientists or not." Ramachandran

Where does the evidence that absolves low-frequency electromagnetic radiation come from? From those very same necromancers-scientists!-who conjured up the evil stuff in the first place. Once the tag "unnatural" has been firmly affixed, it is very difficult to shed. The odor of brimstone persists, and the strongest objective evidence cannot dispel it entirely.

The great virtues were that mathematics remained rigorously free from emotional content, free from ethical content, and free from political content. It allowed people to try to rise to the top by being reasoning scientists and scholars, instead of being bullying politicians or priests.

Baclli swarm within my portals Such as ne'r conceived by mortals, But, bred by scientists, Wise and hoary in some Olympian laboratory. Bacteria as large as mice With feet of fire and heads of ice, Who never interrupt for slumber Their stomping, elephantine rumba. ( From the poem--- " The Common Cold " )

Tycho Brahé from 1546 to 1601. Kepler from 1571 to 1630. Galileo from 1564 to 1642. Gilbert from 1540 to 1603. Francis Bacon from 1561 to 1626. Descartes from 1596 to 1650.

This tendency to continue exuberant play into adulthood is one of the factors that leads most scientists to consider dogs and humans as "paedomorphic

In the absence of experimental evidence, basic beliefs of theoretical physicists may initially have almost a religious flavor, guided by faith and aesthetics. Fortunately unlike religion, these beliefs soon face the hard test of experiment.

As Baumeister puts it, "If we as social scientists restrict our focus to actions that everyone including the perpetrator agrees are evil, we will have almost nothing to study." It is surprising to see how often the worst people in the world—rapists interviewed in prison, say—see themselves as the real victims. They are wrong to see themselves as innocents, but we are wrong as well to see them as different creatures from the rest of us.

In October, an afternoon visit with Albert Einstein in Princeton at Einstein's invitation provided Paul with a welcome change of pace. The two recalled their previous meetings—especially backstage in Princeton when Einstein had seen Paul in Othello. They talked at length about the right to travel, Paul's fight for his artistic life, and scientists' responsibility to speak out against the trampling of constitutional rights.

Among scientists are collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.

I believe that the quantum of our knowledge will increase considerably in the coming years and that scientists will continue to be amongst the brave voices speaking out.