Quotes About Research

People aren't studying the natural world any more, they're mining it.

Whoever has the power in society determines what can be studied, determines what can be observed, determines what can be thought.

They just posture and pontificate. Nobody tests. Nobody does field research. Nobody dares to solve the problems—because the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world.

Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The

In the 1980s, a few genetic engineering companies began to ask, "What is the biological equivalent of a Sony Walkman?" These

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done. And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. This is not a good system for research into those areas of science that affect policy. Even worse, the system works against problem solving. Because if you solve a problem, your funding ends. All that's got to change.

Unable to construct genuine nanoassemblers, Xymos was using bacteria to crank out their molecules. This was genetic engineering, not nanotechnology.

They were making scientific history

scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and your instruments, but in the end your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.

Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always. "The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate.

theoretician, his reputation secured in probability-density functions

After all, the trouble with what the scientists said was that they were always saying something different. This year one idea, next year something else. Scientific opinion was ever changing

Inside, Tim saw a small room bathed in green light. Four technicians in lab coats were peering into double-barreled stereo microscopes, or looking at images on high resolution video screens. The room was filled with yellow stones. The stones were in glass shelves; in cardboard boxes; in large pull-out trays. Each stone was tagged and numbered in black ink.

You know why the scientists would try to do that? It's because they want to do research, of course. That's all they ever want to do, is research. Not to accomplish anything. Not to make any progress. Just do research. Well, they have a surprise coming to them.

scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, continuously infused the blood of young mice into old mice—and found that the old mice functioned as young ones.

our bodies are not constantly in a state of autophagy. It turns on and off. Recent research shows that we can have some control over it, inducing the process by periodically fasting.12 There also is quite a bit of evidence that autophagy helps us slow aging by quieting inflammation and helping build our immune system. Clean out the cellular trash, reap the longevity benefits.

The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours

My biggest concern is the misuse of science to support policies.

Fracking—to take one example—was not the brainchild of private-sector research but the fruit of research paid for twenty years ago by the DOE. Yet fracking has collapsed the price of oil and gas and led to American energy independence. Solar and wind technologies are another example. The

The smaller the sample size, the more likely that it is unrepresentative of the wider population.

Icelanders are among the most inbred human beings on earth—geneticists often use them for research.

Redelmeier had actually co-written an article about that: "Elevator Buttons as Unrecognized Sources of Bacterial Colonization in Hospitals.

Trump's first budget eliminated ARPA-E altogether. It also eliminated the spectacularly successful $70 billion loan program. It cut funding to the national labs in a way that implies the laying off of six thousand of their people. It eliminated all research on climate change. It halved the funding for work to secure the electrical grid from attack or natural disaster.

It confirmed Biederman's sense that "most advances in science come not from eureka moments but from 'hmmm, that's funny.