Quotes About Research

for decades doctors never suspected that this "useless" tissue might actually have a use that escaped their detection. The

summarize the research in complex systems: Mark Buchanan's Ubiquity, Philip Ball's Critical Mass, and Paul Ormerod's Why Most Things Fail. These three authors present the world of social science as full of power laws, a view with which I most certainly agree.

One should give more weight to research that, while being rigorous, contradicts other peers, particularly if it entails costs and reputational harm for its author. Further, Someone with a high public presence who is controversial and takes risks for his opinion is less likely to be a bull***t vendor.*4

He can also formulate a hypothesis after the results of the experiment—thus fitting the hypothesis to the experiment.

It will take a lot of statistical information to override your hesitation.

research on happiness shows that those who live under a self-imposed pressure to be optimal in their enjoyment of things suffer a measure of distress.

One should give more weight to research that, while being rigorous, contradicts other peers, particularly if it entails costs and reputational harm for its author. Further, Someone with a high public presence who is controversial and takes risks for his opinion is less likely to be a bull***t vendor.

I was told that a scientist managed the company and that he had the instinct, as a scientist, to just let scientists look wherever their instinct took them. Commercialization came later.

Political and economic "tail events" are unpredictable, and their probabilities are not scientifically measurable. No matter how many dollars are spent on research, predicting revolutions is not the same as counting cards; humans will never be able to turn politics and economics into the tractable randomness of blackjack.

The strength of the computer entrepreneur Steve Jobs was precisely in distrusting market research and focus groups—those based on asking people what they want—and following his own imagination. His modus was that people don't know what they want until you provide them with it.

He provides the example of a philosopher who puzzles about the reality of time, but who nonetheless applies for a research grant to work on the philosophical problem of time during next year's sabbatical—without doubting the reality of next year's arrival.

Nunca pergunte às pessoas o que elas querem, ou para onde querem ir, ou para onde pensam que deveriam ir, ou, pior ainda, o que elas pensam que desejarão amanhã. A força do empreendedor do ramo da computação Steve Jobs estava, precisamente, em desconfiar das pesquisas de mercado e dos grupos de foco — aqueles com o objetivo de perguntar às pessoas o que elas querem — e seguir sua própria imaginação.

the concept of median used in medical research does not characterize a probability distribution.

Take this simple heuristic—does the scientific researcher whose ideas are applicable to the real world apply his ideas to his daily life? If so, take him seriously. Otherwise, ignore him.

We have the illusion that the world functions thanks to programmed design, university research, and bureaucratic funding, but there is compelling—very compelling—evidence to show that this is an illusion, the illusion I call lecturing birds how to fly.

So here is a simple rule of thumb (a heuristic): to estimate the quality of research, take the caliber of the highest detractor, or the caliber of the lowest detractor whom the author answers in print—whichever is lower.

for someone to be able to help me, he had to be both a practitioner and a researcher, with practice coming before research.

Relies on scientific papers, goes from books to practice

research discloses that high self-esteem is one of the best predictors of personal happiness

I have yet to decide what is to be learned from this region. Further study is necessary.

This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.

For 167 days in 1925 two Polish researchers ate almost nothing but potatoes (mashed with butter, steamed with salt, cut with oil into potato salad). At the end they reported no weight gain, no health problems, and, improbably, "no craving for change" in their diet.

Solar research had been the product of anxiety about fossil fuels. When the anxiety faded, so did the interest.

Likely the milpa cannot be replicated on an industrial scale. But by studying its essential features, researchers may be able to smooth the rough ecological edges of conventional agriculture. "Mesoamerica still has much to teach us," Wilkes said.