Quotes About Evidence

On secondhand smoke, the good news (sort of) was that there was plenty of evidence on human exposure and the results were consistent. Lots of smoke produced lots of cancer.33 Less smoke produced less cancer. The effects were seen in the United States, Germany, and Japan, despite other differences in lifestyle, diet, and the like. The weight of evidence was heavy, indeed.34 The EPA called it "conclusive."35 Who could deny all that? The answer: Both Fred Seitz and Fred Singer.

A similar phenomenon developed with acid rain in the 1990s, as the media attended to the idea that its cause was still not established—more than a decade after that was no longer true—or the claim that it would cost more to fix than it was worth, which was unsupported by evidence.

History shows us clearly that science does not provide certainty. It does not provide proof. It only provides the consensus of experts, based on the organized accumulation and scrutiny of evidence.

This is a characteristic pattern in science: first there is scattered evidence of a phenomenon, published in specialist journals or reports, and then someone begins to connect the dots.

If science took the side of regulation—or even gave evidence to support the idea that regulation might be needed to protect the life on Earth—then science, the very thing Jastrow, Nierenberg, Teller, and Frederick Seitz had spent their working careers trying to build up, would now have to be torn down.

If science took the side of regulation—or even gave evidence to support the idea that regulation might be needed to protect the life on Earth—then science, the very thing Jastrow, Nierenberg, Teller, and Frederick Seitz had spent their working careers trying to build

A focus on one method above all others is a kind of fetish. These cases suggest that some of the historical examples of "science gone awry" arose from what I designate methodological fetishism. These are situations where investigators privileged a particular method and ignored or discounted evidence obtained by other methods, which, if heeded, could have changed their minds.

The chapters written by the natural scientists were broadly consistent with what other natural scientists had already said. No one challenged the basic claim that warming would occur, with serious physical and biological ramifications.

What are the relative risks of ignoring scientific claims that turn out to be true versus acting on claims that turn out to be false?194 The risks of not flossing are real, but not inordinate. The risks of not acting on the scientific evidence of climate change are inordinate.

when the consequences of our scientific conclusions are non-epistemic—i.e., when they are moral, ethical, political, or economic—it is almost inevitable that our values will creep into our judgments of evidence.

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.

Scientists had been saying for a long time that human activity was a likely cause of warming. They were now saying that it was demonstrated.

The writer C. S. Lewis once characterized this style of argument: "The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden."18 Such arguments are effectively impossible to refute, as Lewis noted. "A belief in invisible cats cannot be logically disproved," although it does "tell us a good deal about those who hold it."19 The

In 2006, U.S. district judge Gladys Kessler found that the tobacco industry had "devised and executed a scheme to defraud consumers and potential consumers" about the hazards of cigarettes, hazards that their own internal company documents proved they had known about since the 1950s.

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

There is now converging evidence supporting the idea that offspring are affected by parental trauma exposures occurring before their birth, and possibly even prior to their conception.' Rachel Yehuda

Your opinion doesn't count. Your fond hopes and fantasies of Paradigms Found don't count. What counts is the quality and the quantity of the evidence.

The clitoris not only applauds when a women flaunts her mastery; it will give a standing ovation. In the multiple orgasm, we see the finest evidence that our lady Klitoris helps those who help themselves. It may take many minutes to reach the first summit, but once there the lusty mountaineer finds wings awaiting her. She does noy need to scramble back to the ground before scaling the next peak, but can glide like a raptor on currents of joy.

Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. When man rejects reason as his standard of judgement, only one alternative standard remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition.

Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. When man rejects reason as his standard of judgement, only one alternative standard remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feelings with knowledge

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The really striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases… but people prefer reassurance to research.

Only a handful of states, it turns out, have not been determined to have systematically brutalized the youth in their care. A review of all fifty states found only eight where there was not conclusive evidence of system-wide mistreatment.

Live your life in a sublime spirit of confidence and determination; disregard appearances, conditions, in fact all evidence of your senses that deny the fulfillment of your desire. Rest in the assumption that you are already what you want to be.