Alan Stern Quotes

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

A lot of my role is advocacy, and as a scientist, you're an advocate, too, because you are coming up with a theory and having to convince your fellow scientists that you're right.

Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.

It's for scientists to lay out the data and lay out what they think, and then it's for the public to make up its own mind. We don't live in a priesthood where some small group imposes its views on other people - that's not the way that science works, and it's not the way a democratic society should work.

Most physicists like myself won't believe the result until every possible caveat has been investigated and/or the result is confirmed elsewhere.

Indeed, scientific truth by consensus has had a uniformly bad history.

Science thrives on self-correction …. refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment.

In science, you can say things that seem crazy, but in the long run, they can turn out to be right. We can get really good evidence, and in the end, the community will come around.

Those in science perform research, have it reviewed by their peers, publish the results, and believe the answer should be obvious.

There is no debate here, just scientists and non-scientists. And since the subject is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote.

Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories have done. It is open to being challenged and to being proven incorrect.

Some things tend not to work so well for science - things that rely on substantial written contributions by key experts are a case in point - but even there I tend to keep an open mind, because it may just be a case of finding the right formula.

Science has authority, not because of white coats, or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case.

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.

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 thrill of science is the process. It's a social process. It's a process of collective discovery. It's debate, it's experimentation and it's verification of claims that might be false. It's the greatest foundation for a society.

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

Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.

Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.

Moreover, in the experimental sciences, the scientific fraternity must test a new theory to destruction, if possible.

Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong.

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.

Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted.

Theorists have wonderful ideas which take years and years to be verified.

Science is a series of judgments, revised without ceasing.