Empirical Support Quotes

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

Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.

Convictions can best be supported with experience and clear thinking.

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.

Wit is a thing capable of proof.

Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another.

A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

I believe in things that have proof.

Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.

We don‘t have faith that #freedom works. We have evidence.

Science shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

We reject creationism because there is no evidence to support it. By contrast, the notion that biology is at least partially the basis of gender is an empirically supportable, and even well-supported, proposition. The gender scholars reject it on ideological, not evidentiary, grounds.

I might respect you as a brilliant intellect, runner, musician or juggler. But respect your BELIEFS? Only if they're supported by evidence.