Alice Roberts Quotes

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of 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.

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

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.

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

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

Those in science perform research, have it reviewed by their peers, publish the results, and believe the answer should be obvious.

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected.

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

When all is said and done, science actually takes hard work and a willingness to sometimes find out that your most cherished hypothesis is wrong.

If you're a physicist, for heaven's sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn't agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory.

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

Science is a self-sufficient activity.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.

A science is something which is constructed from truth on workable axioms. There are 55 axioms in scientology which are very demonstrably true, and on these can be constructed a great deal.

One finds the truth by making a hypothesis and comparing observations with the hypothesis.

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

If you are a researcher, you are trying to figure out what the question is as well as what the answer is.

Science is a series of judgments, revised without ceasing.

It is not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

If you're a real scientist, you're constantly open to new data. Nothing is ever 100% validated.

Something my father dearly loved is the scientific method, and it's founded in this element of humility. The idea is that you pursue the truth wherever it goes; you need to evidence, and you can - you see if it's repeatable.