Martin Gardner Quotes

Early on, when you're working in a new area of science, you have to think about all the pitfalls and things that could lead you to believe that you had done something when you hadn't, and, even worse, leading others to believe it.

Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.

I've only actively promoted what we always hope is good science.

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

Here's a news flash: scientists can be wrong. That's no big deal (unless the scientist is you), since research is self-correcting. Consequently, most errors by scientists become historical curiosities, with little long-term importance.

We've learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.

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 humble scientist is a good scientist.

However, I believe that it would be difficult to have legitimate scientists agree to participate.

It's always a tough call deciding whether, as a scientist, you should argue publicly with the creationists. It's a dilemma that I encounter frequently in another subject area: Does it make sense to bandy words with someone from the UFO community?

You don't want to come out with anything that's wrong, of course, in a scientific, you know, a major scientific announcement, and so you're being so careful trying to check, well maybe it's this, maybe it's that, you're looking at every possible thing.

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

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.

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

In my grandfather's lab, scientists did independent research, and peers reviewed and commented on its merits. Politics, he taught me, had no place in the scientific process.

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.

Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong.

If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.

We all know scientists who in private life do not come up to the standard of truthfulness, but who, nevertheless, would not consciously falsify the results of their researches.

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.

I have issues with anyone who tries to claim that science is unworkable - creationists who deny evidence for past history, yet are happy to benefit from the products of the methodology that they otherwise deny.

When people don’t like the results that they are getting from honest scientific research, they try and discredit the researchers and the methods..

When you have a novel, exciting finding, that gets attention. People are going to push back, and that's honestly how science should work.

It is possible in medicine, even when you intend to do good, to do harm instead. That is why science thrives on actively encouraging criticism rather than stifling it.

Never, ever, compromise on science.