Rush D. Holt Jr. Quotes

If you're a scientist, and you have to have an answer, even in the absence of data, you're not going to be a good scientist.

I object to a legal approach when settling questions of science or scientific behavior.

A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better.

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.

Thus, in general, in the first instance, the direction of interest in empirical fact will be canalised by the logical structure of the theoretical system.

If Baltimore's view, that scientists who do not take the words of authorities are far removed from the ordinary behavior of scientists, prevails in the scientific community, then something fundamental, very serious, and very disturbing is happening to the scientific community.

Science has become politicized, and that's an embarrassment.

Any time scientists disagree, it's because we have insufficient data. Then we can agree on what kind of data to get; we get the data; and the data solves the problem. Either I'm right, or you're right, or we're both wrong. And we move on. That kind of conflict resolution does not exist in politics or religion.

My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

There is an anti-science by the far right. We have to be careful that the far left doesn't balance this with a naive approach of promising what we can't deliver. I mean, science is neutral; it's not politically conservative or liberal.

What we want is scientists who don't become part of the policy discussion: All they do is produce science. If someone becomes an advocate, then I won't pay as much attention to their science.

Only science and the spirit of seeking truth from facts can save China. I firmly believe in this.

Governments and scientists in India need to ensure that politics and religious ideology do not intrude into science. They belong to separate spheres, and if they are not kept separate, it is science in India and the country as a whole that will suffer.

Experience by itself is not science.

I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works. That's what I claim. And if they did, they'd be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless.

This political movement has patently demonstrated that it will not defend the integrity of science in any case in which science runs afoul of its core political constituencies. In so doing, it has ceded any right to govern a technologically advanced and sophisticated nation.

Whenever you involve scientists with politicians there is a struggle.

I have been a professor, and I have been a policymaker, and as a professor, you think in terms of truth or absolutes.

One of the big concerns is the increasing disrespect for the scientific method and for policies that aren't based on facts and evidence.

As a scientist, the starting point is always the facts of the matter, whereas often, in politics, the starting point is how does this play in the next election.

Anything that makes us take more seriously scientists - or economists or chemists or physicists or biologists - I think is helpful in times when things get distorted because of people not paying attention to all the facts.

You cannot build public policies on sentiment, on panic and fear.

Never act upon wishful thinking. Act without checking the facts, and chances are that you will be swept away along with the mob.

That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.