Quotes about Scientific Verification

George Santayana

The true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched when we say that science alone is capable of verification.

The scientist insists on verification; the religious theologian does not; the philosopher sometimes does and sometimes does not.

Walter Andrew Shewhart

Every sentence in order to have definite scientific meaning must be practically or at least theoretically verifiable as either true or false upon the basis of experimental measurements either practically or theoretically obtainable by carrying out a definite and previously specified operation in the future.

This quotation is not only a classic criterion of whether or not a question is scientific, but it became very fundamental to the political debate in the late 20th century over the teaching of so called “Creationism” in the science curriculum of the public schools. The Federal courts have ruled that it is not science, and as such may not be taught in science classes. The reason that it is not science is that it is not falsifiable as this and other scientific definitions require.

Rudolf Carnap

Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science, the very latest controversies, are worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like 'General Relativity still governing planetary orbits' or 'Phlogiston theory remains false'? By the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline.

Bertrand Russell

When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England.

Seth Shostak

Here's a news flash: scientists can be wrong. That's no big deal (unless the scientist is you), since research is self-correcting. Consequently, most errors by scientists become historical curiosities, with little long-term importance.

Rainer Weiss

The whole world tried to reproduce the Weber experiments.

Walter Reisch

A scientist who cannot prove what he has accomplished, has accomplished nothing.

Donald Cram

Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work-and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification.

Michael Polanyi

I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.

Scientific Verification Quotes