Paul D. Boyer Quotes

This was good training for research, because large parts of experimental work are sometimes boring or involve the use of skills in which one is not particularly gifted.

We should teach the students, as well as executives, how to conduct experiments, how to examine data, and how to use these tools to make better decisions.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

When you come up with a theory, you fall in love with the beauty the simplicity and elegance of it. But then you have to get a sheet of paper and pencil and crack out all the details. Hundreds and hundreds of pages. Because you have to prove it.

Science cannot progress without reliable and accurate measurement of what it is you are trying to study. The key is measurement, simple as that.

You must acquire something of that industrious habit of mind which the study of natural science gives,—the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see; the art of connecting facts together in your mind in cause and effect

I learned quickly, as I tell my graduate students now, there are no answers in the back of the book when the equipment doesn't work or the measurements look strange.

The goal is to provide analytical tools that will last students a lifetime.

Science by itself is about numbers, and it's about measuring things. It's very important but it's very dry.

Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.

I found working in the lab is so completely different than reading a textbook about it. You know, you're planning strategies; you're working with your own hands. There's essential satisfaction in running experiments.

Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.

Soon I knew the craft of experimental physics was beyond me - it was the sublime quality of patience - patience in accumulating data, patience with recalcitrant equipment - which I sadly lacked.

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.

I'm a bit of a freak for evidence-based analysis. I strongly believe in data.

Take the situation of a scientist solving a problem, where he has certain data, which call for certain responses. Some of this set of data call for his applying such and such a law, while others call for another law.

I like solving problems, and science provides a logical way of solving real-life problems.

If a scientist is not befuddled by what they're looking at, then they're not a research scientist.

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

No observational problem will not be solved by more data.

One of the biggest and most important tools of theoretical physics is the wastebasket.

It is the mark of a greatly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics.

Just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

Science is a way of getting knowledge. It's a method. It's a method that really relies on making mistakes. We propose ideas, they are usually wrong, and we test them against the data. Scientists do this in a formal way. It's a way that everyone can go through life; that's how we should be teaching science from a very young age.