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“On any Tuesday morning, if asked, a good working scientist will tell you with some self-satisfaction that the affairs of his field are nicely in order, that things are finally looking clear and making sense, and all is well. But come back again on another Tuesday, and the roof may have just fallen in on his life's work.”

“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.”

“Our scientists all the more occupy advanced positions in the development of world science. By the example of their successes in the field of atomic energy, our scientists and technicians have vividly shown how much the increased might of the Soviet state and the further growth of its international authority depends on their efforts and practical successes.”

“Louis [Leakey] was anxious to initiate a scientific study of these chimpanzees. It would be difficult, he emphasized, for nothing was known; there were no guidelines for such a field study; and the habitat was remote and rugged. Dangerous wild animals would be living there, and chimpanzees themselves were considered at least four times stronger than humans. I remember wondering what kind of scientist he would find for such a herculean task.”

“The NSF study projected a shortfall of 675,000 scientists and engineers without considering the future demand for such individuals in the marketplace. It simply observed a decline in the number of 22-year-olds and projected that this demographic trend would result in a huge shortfall. This could be termed the supply-side theory of labor market analysis. But making labor market projections without considering the demand side of the equation doesn't pass the laugh test with experts in the field.”

“How ignorant we are! How ignorant everyone is! We can cut across only a small area of the appallingly expanding fields of knowledge. No human being can know more than a tiny fraction of the whole. It must have been satisfactory in ancient times when one's own land seemed to be the universe; when research studies, pamphlets, books did not issue in endless flow; when laboratories and scientists were not so rapidly pushing back frontiers of knowledge that the process of unlearning the old left you gasping for breath.”

“It's absurd and quite tragic the way people have managed to pit science against faith. They aren't in conflict at all - they're long lost dance partners. I don't divide the world up into Christians and other people - we are all human beings, brothers and sisters, and we embrace truth wherever we find it, whether that's in a lab, a field or a cathedral. Because sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a poet.”

“Scientists often invent words to fill the holes in their understanding.These words are meant as conveniences until real understanding can be found. ... Words such as dimension and field and infinity ... are not descriptions of reality, yet we accept them as such because everyone is sure someone else knows what the words mean.”

“I'm not a psychologist, and I don't know how to play a more sophisticated role than the one that I have played for quite a few years, and that is spending a lot of time with these hard-working scientists in the various fields of expertise that relate to the climate crisis, learning as fully as I can the truths they are discovering, asking them to explain it in language that's simple enough for me to understand and then use that language to convey the essence of it, and then letting the chips fall where they may.”

“When it was suggested to Pasteur that many of his great achievements depended on luck, he replied - I'm sure with more than a little irritation - 'In the field of observation in science, fortune only favours the prepared mind.' It is not by chance that it is always the great scientists who have the luck.”

“We are having wool pulled over our eyes if we let ourselves be convinced that scientists, taken as a group, are anything special in the way of brains. They are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their own trade, just like all other professional men. There are some geniuses among them, just as there are mental giants in any other field of endeavor.”

“This is really funny, but we did a study of the occupations of female characters on TV, and there are so many female forensic scientists on TV because of all the CSI shows and Bones and whatever. I don't have to lobby anybody to add more female forensic scientists as role models. There's plenty.In real life, the people going into that field now are something like two-thirds women.”