Nathan Myhrvold Quotes

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

Truth in science is always determined from observational facts.

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.

The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking its rules.

A valid scientific theory is predictive, verifiable, and replicable. To me, that's beautiful.

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.

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.

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.

If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing.

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

Measurements, observations, descriptions can only be considered scientific when they are independently confirmed by other people.

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 criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

No one believes an hypothesis except its originator but everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter. Most people are ready to believe something based on experiment but the experimenter knows the many little things that could have gone wrong in the experiment. For this reason the discoverer of a new fact seldom feels quite so confident of it as others do.

Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths I knew to be as little conclusive in theology as in physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to be worth anything, however plausibly backed up with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered bona fide from the analysis of all the attainable phenomena, and verified wherever possible by experiment.

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.

A good scientific theory is one which is falsifiable, which has not been falsified.

The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.

The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism... for testing your thoughts against the universe.

Scientific method: There's a madness in the method.