Carl Hart Quotes

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.

Either data supports the observations or they don't. Voting doesn't work in science.

What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions ... and yet which still remains a context.

Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.

Human nature is so constituted, that all see and judge better in the affairs of other men than in their own.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.

Science has a culture that is inherently cautious and that is normally not a bad thing. You could even say conservative, because of the peer review process and because the scientific method prizes uncertainty and penalises anyone who goes out on any sort of a limb that is not held in place by abundant and well-documented evidence.

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.

We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.

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

It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamor raised by heated partisans.

I don't think you can judge something without seeing it.

A scientist... must accept the results of experiment, and nothing but the results of experiment.

To be a good biographer, you have to be an empiricist. You know, you have to gather the evidence, you have to keep an open mind, and you have to be objective. A memoirist goes in with all the baggage of a bad biographer.

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.

As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

It is necessary to judge accurately the things that rest on opinion

Scientific method isn't about winning popularity contests. It's also not about being with the majority opinion. It isn't supposed be determined by politics. It is about attempting to limit bias or prejudice in the results

Some people have facts; these can be proven. Some people have theories; these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it.

The scientific method is about trying to remove our own bias and subjectivity, and be as objective as possible. But then you can put it back into context and you're allowed to be emotional and human about the way you engage with it.