Stanley B. Prusiner 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.

Frequently, I have been asked if an experiment I have planned is pure or applied research; to me, it is more important to know if the experiment will yield new and probably enduring knowledge about nature.

I wanted to be a scientist. My undergraduate degree is in biology, and I really did think I might go off and be some kind of a lady Darwin someplace. It turned out that I'm really awful at science and that I have no gift for actually doing science myself. But I'm very interested in others who practice science and in the stories of science.

I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology.

Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.

Experimental science is a craft and an art, and part of the art is knowing when to end a fruitless experiment. There is a danger of becoming obsessed with a fruitless experiment even if it goes nowhere.

The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away.

The ideas of science germinate in a matrix of established knowledge gained by experiment; they are not lonesome thoughts, born in a rarified realm where no researcher has ever gone before.

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.

I have also testified repeatedly and published some articles in favor of Small Science.

Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate. Our single greatest defense against scientific ignorance is education, and early in the life of every scientist, the child's first interest was sparked by a teacher.

I have a Ph.D. in cell biology. And that's really manual labor. I mean, experimental science, you do it with your hands. So it's very different. You're out there in a lab, cleaning test tubes, and it just wasn't that fascinating.

If I could change the science system, my prescription for changing the whole thing would be organising it around big goals and building teams to do it.

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.

All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it's such an interesting part of their environment.

The people who work in the scientific field, they need help to convey what it's about.

Science was something that really caught my attention. It was something I really could sink my teeth into.

I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Which kind of scientist was the question.

A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.

All research scientists know that writing in the passive voice is artificial; they are not disembodied observers, but people doing research.

The images attempt to capture scientific thought. They represent the physical manifestation of the thought process. Everything in the laboratory is a product of a stream of conscious or unconscious thought.

I think becoming a scientist is the product of parents who gave me enormous opportunities to master nature.

At the beginning of all experimental work stands the choice of the appropriate technique of investigation.

All I do is look, listen and try to make sense of what I find, in biological terms.

Science is not the glamour that's portrayed in films. It's a lot of drudgery work, along with the wonderfully exciting periods when you discover something.