Hypothesis Testing Quotes

Evidence is fact that discriminates between one theory and another. Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Theories can be devastated by facts but they can never be proven correct by facts. What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with that which is known factually. Some other theory may come along tomorrow that is still more consistent with the facts, or explains those facts with fewer, clearer, or more manageable assumptions.

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

Over the years, a number of other intriguing experimental ideas and areas of investigation have been the objects of my attention, and I have devoted some time and effort to exploring the inherent possbilities.

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Science is the practice of failing repeatedly but learning as you go.

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

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Statistics is the plural of anecdote.

Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. The main difference is that the hypothesis that underlies an investment decision is intended to make money and not to establish a universally valid generalization.

Assumptions are dangerous things.

Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.

The test of all knowledge is experiment.

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

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.

Great scientific contributions have been techniques.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

I never once made a discovery ... I speak without exaggeration that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light ... Yet in only two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.

Fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis.

The fact that we don't keep repeating tests in the same arena is not because the probability of the hypothesis showing its falsity in other arenas goes up after it has passed tests in one arena.

It turned out I was pretty good in science. But again, because of the small budget, in science class we couldn't afford to do experiments in order to prove theories. We just believed everything. Actually, I think that class was called Religion. Religion class was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were being taught in all the other classes.

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.