Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.

To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis.

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

Seek truth from facts.

Science consists exactly of those forms of knowledge that can be verified and duplicated by anybody.

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 man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

A scientist... must accept the results of experiment, and nothing but the results of experiment.

I take what I see work. I'm a strict believer in the scientific principle of believing nothing, only taking the best evidence available at the present time, interpreting it as best you can, and leaving your mind open to the fact that new evidence will appear tomorrow.

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.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

My colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations.

What we can do is provide the tools, through our educational system, for people to be able to tell sense from nonsense. These tools include the scientific method, skeptical questioning, empirical evidence, verifying sources, etc.

Either data supports the observations or they don't. Voting doesn't work in science.

Disregard belief systems that aren't based on empirical studies.

It is clear that I am a person who believes fundamentally in facts, evidence, data, and science, which supports decision-making and allows us to function as a society based on knowledge.

What I learned in school made me a better journalist and a better writer because forensic science is, as scientific disciplines must be, about critical thinking and objective analysis.

Educated guesswork' is what science is. You form hypotheses, test them against the evidence, and if they fit the evidence, you can assume you've got close to the truth.

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

Maybe scientists are fundamentalist when it comes to defining in some abstract way what is meant by 'truth'. But so is everybody else. I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.

Imagination should give wings to our thoughts but we always need decisive experimental proof, and when the moment comes to draw conclusions and to interpret the gathered observations, imagination must be checked and documented by the factual results of the experiment.

Science has nothing to do with any dogma. Science ceases to exist when there is a dogma.

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.