Quotes About Research

When we initially proposed LIGO, the only sources that we were really contemplating were supernovae. We thought we would see something like one a year, maybe even ten a year.

I'm fairly practiced at squirreling out stories and sources - I talk to people; I ask people if they know anyone worth talking to.

We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous. They are very good at imagining character: that's why the novels sell. They have no authority when it comes to the handling of historical sources. Full stop.

The object of all the former voyages to the South Seas undertaken by the command of his present majesty, has been the advancement of science and the increase of knowledge.

I majored in history and political science at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, and I have always loved researching how a single human being can change the course of history.

In 1996, I received a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Southern California.

We had 83 different space research projects on my last space flight in '98, and they covered the whole gamut.

I think even in bad times it's good to keep some money going into research. And that's the purpose of the whole space program. It's not just exploration and going to see how far we can go out into space and keep people alive and bring them back, although exploration certainly has its place.

I think every time we send a spacecraft to an asteroid or comet, we learn more.

The one I really get on with is Princess Anne. Talk about calls a spade a shovel! And she's so clued-up. She's a patron of a number of charities. I've been involved in a couple and she's not just a name. She knows the research programmes that are going on. She really does her homework.

The really basic stuff that fuels 30-year job booms almost always comes from government research, stuff like biotech, the transistor, the Internet. The idea that private capital can handle the early spade work is a joke.

During my research, I reviewed a book entitled "A Catalogue of the Gods," in which were listed the 30,000 gods which man has worshiped.

The break consisted of my good fortune in meeting and gaining the cooperation of Andrew Carnegie. On that occasion Carnegie planted in my mind the idea of organizing the principles of achievement into a philosophy of success. Thousands of people have profited by the discoveries made in the twenty-five years of research, and several fortunes have been accumulated through the application of the philosophy. The beginning was simple. It was an IDEA which anyone might have developed.

Any man who devotes that much time . . . must of necessity make discoveries of great value to others.

Edison concentrated upon the work of harmonizing natural laws

It is believed by men who have devoted years of research to the subject, that all energy and matter throughout the universe respond to and are controlled by the Law of Attraction which causes elements and forces of a similar nature to gather around certain centers of attraction. It is through the operation of this same universal Law of Attraction that constant, deeply seated, strong DESIRE attracts the physical equivalent or counterpart of the thing desired, or the means of securing it.

Knowledge of the prospective buyer. The

Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter--it is the only filter. If the subject is not interesting enough for me to look it up independently , for my own curiosity or purposes, and I have not done so before, then I should not be writing about it at all, period. It does not mean that libraries (physical and virtual) are not acceptable; it means that they should not be the source of any idea.

Pasteur said, like all great discoverers, he knew something about accidental discoveries. The best way to get maximal exposure is to keep researching. Collect opportunities--

I believe that forcing researchers to eat their own cooking whenever possible solves a serious problem in science.

It turns out, as shown by Karsenty and others who have since embarked on the line of research, that the reverse is also largely true: loss of bone density and degradation of the health of the bones also causes aging, diabetes, and, for males, loss of fertility and sexual function. We just cannot isolate any causal relationship in a complex system.

It would be preferable if we were better at understanding cancer or the (highly nonlinear) weather than the origin of the universe. How

Makridakis and Hibon reached the sad conclusion that statistically sophisticated or complex methods do not necessarily provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones.

Mother Nature is not perfect, but has so far proven smarter than humans, certainly much smarter than biologists. So my approach is to combine evidence-based research (stripped of biological theory), with an a priori that Mother Nature has more authority than anyone.