Walter Rudolf Hess Quotes

What intrigues basic scientists like me is that anytime we do a series of experiments, there are going to be three or four new questions that come up when you think you've answered one.

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

What's nice about experiments is that they are much more closely tied to what theorists think about the world than normal empirical research. You can design your experiment to exactly ask the question you want to ask. This is not true about normal empirical research.

If one in twenty does not seem high enough odds, we may, if we prefer it, draw the line at one in fifty (the 2 per cent. point), or one in a hundred (the 1 per cent. point). Personally, the writer prefers to set a low standard of significance at the 5 per cent. point, and ignore entirely all results which fail to reach this level. A scientific fact should be regarded as experimentally established only if a properly designed experiment rarely fails to give this level of significance.

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

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

Statistics is, or should be, about scientific investigation and how to do it better, but many statisticians believe it is a branch of mathematics. Now I agree that the physicist, the chemist, the engineer, and the statistician can never know too much mathematics, but their objectives should be better physics, better chemistry, better engineering, and in the case of statistics, better scientific investigation. Whether in any given study this implies more or less mathematics is incidental.

When the basic status of a theory is clear, and all that needs to be cleared are details, you can collaborate. But if the main structure of a hypothesis isn't established, and you want to change the paradigm - like it was the case in the 1960s - it's better to work alone.

One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results.

I soon became convinced... that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the universe really consists of.

My three years at the NIH were critical in my scientific education. I learned an immense amount about the research process: developing assays, purifying macromolecules, documenting a discovery by many approaches, and writing clear manuscripts describing what is known and what remains to be investigated.

We should teach the students, as well as executives, how to conduct experiments, how to examine data, and how to use these tools to make better decisions.

In the spirit of science, there really is no such thing as a 'failed experiment.' Any test that yields valid data is a valid test.

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

All of the studies we do in my group are quantified.

Hypotheses are what we lack the least.

The value and utility of any experiment are determined by the fitness of the material to the purpose for which it is used, and thus in the case before us it cannot be immaterial what plants are subjected to experiment and in what manner such experiment is conducted.

When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones.

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

What is not a risk with a parts-per-billion test can always be exposed to a parts-per-trillion examination. If rats cope with .the heaviest dose of a chemical that can be soaked into their food and water, you can always gavage them. Or try mice or rabbits. Again, the only stopping rule is discovery of the sought-for effect, or exhaustion of the investigator (or his funds). Many of the risk assessment procedures used today are logically indistinguishable from those used by the Inquisition.

if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

I would rather not depend on sophisticated statistics to demonstrate behavior. I prefer to design experiments that will produce interocular effects—hit you between the eyes.

If you don't have material, you don't have an experiment.