Knowledge Verification Quotes

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

Never believe on faith, see for yourself! What you yourself don't learn you don't know.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.

I'd like to get to a state where people think that if you've Googled something, you've researched it, and otherwise haven't, and that's it.

The invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.

Teachers say to me, 'The internet is full of rubbish, wrong answers.' But you would be surprised how just long it takes to find wrong information on Google, and where it's not obvious that it's wrong.

When we were doing the "Angel Dust" thing we got information from the National Institute of Drug Abuse because we knew that if we went out and said something about angel dust people were going to ask questions about it and we wanted to be sure we had all the information to deal with it when those questions came up. So it's all a question of being as prepared as possible out front, so that if you are going to deal with information it'll be correct. A lot of people won't check it out but some people will.

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to "get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted 'on him".

I should consider that I know nothing about physics if I were able to explain only how things might be, and were unable to demonstrate that they could not be otherwise.

Even if individual researchers are prone to falling in love with their own theories, the broader process of peer review and institutionalized skepticism are designed to ensure that, eventually, the best ideas prevail.

I really do think that science has an internal structure, and it makes sense, and we can test it.

I think that at the end of the day correcting misinformation and questioning what we think we know as a habit of mind is incredibly important.

Most of what we know we don't really know first hand. I've never seen a cancer cell. But I trust this community of experts who have, so I believe that cancer exists. But we trust these experts, and we trust that the experts have a system of checks and balances and self-correction. And we have to insist that experts have certain certifications. They're not perfect. Every once in awhile there's an engine falls off the wing of a plane, or a tax audit happens and you find out your expert made a mistake. But it's a pretty good system. It's the best system we've got.

Well, how do I know that they don't know the answer unless I ask?

The American public recognizes truth versus assumption, presumptions, and the personal opinions of witnesses without firsthand knowledge.

Thus we arrive at the singular conclusion that of all the information passed by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life -- it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any.