Dean Ornish Quotes

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.

Science thrives on self-correction …. refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment.

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories - much of the debugging has to be done by others.

Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

The thrill of science is the process. It's a social process. It's a process of collective discovery. It's debate, it's experimentation and it's verification of claims that might be false. It's the greatest foundation for a society.

Moreover, in the experimental sciences, the scientific fraternity must test a new theory to destruction, if possible.

I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.

Far too many scientists, including my good friend Richard Dawkins, present science as the truth and present it as factually correct. And actually, of course, that clearly isn't true.

When you have a novel, exciting finding, that gets attention. People are going to push back, and that's honestly how science should work.

Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

Modern science rests on a universality that transcends ethnic, racial, and religious frameworks.

The proof of a theory is in its reasoning, not in its sponsorship. The proof of a theory is in its reasoning, not in its sponsorship.

[plaintiffs] cannot, by simply filing suit and crying ‘character assassination,” silence those who hold divergent views, no matter how divergent those views may be to plaintiffs’ interests. Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation […] More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models – not larger awards of damages – mark the path towards superior understanding of the world around us.

But whereas skepticism and uncertainty have always been the heart and soul of science, confidence and certainty are the coin of the realm in much of today’s public discourse. Unquestioning confidence is deeply troubling for the scientific community because it is not the currency we trade in, and it has led people in America and around the world to question scientific enterprise itself. We should all be troubled when science is treated as if it were an ideology rather than a discipline.

We should all be troubled when science is treated as if it were an ideology rather than a discipline.

One of the things Kuhn said about normal science is that people 'expect' things to be discovered.

If you're a real scientist, you're constantly open to new data. Nothing is ever 100% validated.

That's the nice thing about the field of science - the test of time sorts out the truth.

Science is a wonderful way of getting out what's real.

In science, you can say things that seem crazy, but in the long run, they can turn out to be right. We can get really good evidence, and in the end, the community will come around.