Robert Winston Quotes
Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.
Winston, Robert. Bad Ideas? An Arresting History of Our Inventions. Bantam Press, 2010.
While this is generally true, from the scientific point of view, it is not quite right. The layman and most engineers believe that scientists discover things that exist. Although they do most of the time, breakthrough’s of the last century have for example discovered new chemical elements, but there are a few that science has CREATED—they exist nowhere in nature. Scientists are beginning to develop new life forms as well as discovering already existing ones. For over a century now the science of metallurgy has created thousands of alloys that did not previously exist.
Some scientists would use this as an example of what scientific research is really like; others would argue that Ballard, however great as a field scientists and explorer, was a poor basic scientist and theoretician. He tends to work in the softer side of his science. This would be a very unusual occurrence for an experimental physicist or a molecular biologist.
Robert Maurice Lipson Winston, Baron Winston FMedSci FRSA FRCP FRCOG FREng is a British professor, medical doctor, scientist, television presenter and Labour Party politician.
