Stephen Jay Gould Quotes
One cannot always be right in our complex world; no dishonor attends an incorrect choice among plausible outcomes drawn from a properly constructed argument.
Stephen Jay Gould, 1941-2002, Scientist, "The Smoking Gun of Eugenics," Natural History, December 1991.
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When issues are complicated, trusting your instincts and intuition is very dangerous. There are so many variables that interact that you really have to analyze and think through all the possible options to avoid problematical unintended consequences and interactions.
The Central Intelligence Agency had a hand in the assassination having smuggled in the weapons. However, the government takeover plan did not go as expected and there was no clear alternative plan to go to.
Referring to scientific and technological public policy issues such as the Space Defense Initiative, popularly known as "Star Wars"
There is a great tendency in politics and government operations to get extremely precise numbers because political opponents will always attack all numbers that do not support their positions. The result is that typically, so much time and money goes into trying to get precision, that by the time the numbers are good enough the opportunity to make the right policy decision will have passed. Much information that bears on an issue is never used because it is not precise enough while the precise information is not particularly relevant. See {619763} for a similar related quote.
Even today, the lack of logic in many fields—especial politics and public policy—has caused an intellectual and emotional rift between scientists and many in government. Bush was one of the great scientists and thinkers in American history. He had advised FDR to go ahead with the research and development program to try and develop an atomic bomb. He was the only Government Official who Roosevelt discussed the idea with. At the time, Bush as a government official supervised and directed many thousands of scientists, and was one of just a few scientists who monitored and advised on the Manhattan Project to develop the Bomb.
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, where he divided his time teaching there and at Harvard.
