James D. Watson Quotes

The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.

Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.

Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them.

If you're a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis.

An Experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a Scientific Experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.

Science is the business of generating testable hypotheses.

A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.

Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)

Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.

Science values static patterns.

But to measure cause and effect... you must ensure that a simple correlation, however tempting it may be, is not mistaken for a cause. In the 1990s the stork population of Germany increased and the German at-home birth rate rose as well. Shall we credit storks for airlifting the babies?

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.

Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as motley as the growth of knowledge to be strapped to one methodology.

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard.

Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.

I am a creature of chemicals.

In science we have to consider two things: power and circumstance.

The TV scientist who mutters sadly, "The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for," is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't prove anything one way or another.

Scientists construct facts by constantly making decisions about what they will consider significant, what experiments they should pursue, and how they will describe their observations.

I think science has a better story to tell than anyone else has been able to tell and that's because it's based on the rigorous winnowing that science and scientists are always doing in order to find out what's really happening. I think it's really good to encourage generally our ability to tell stories and that's a great skill that we come by naturally, so I'm excited about that.

Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on.

... the actual and physical conduct of an experiment must govern the statistical procedure of its interpretation.

The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning process.