Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost.
It takes enormous effort to avoid all theories and just see.
Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--reversing cause and effect. I call these the ‘wet streets cause rain’ stories. Paper’s full of them.
Reality is always greater--much greater—than what we know, than whatever we can say about it.
Science is a...method for taking measurements that describe something—reality--that may not be understood at all.
Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time.
Science is...a method of inquiry [that] says an assertion is valid--and merits universal acceptance—only if it can be independently verified.
The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus.
The romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature.
Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge.
You cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form.