Quotes about Research

Science is an artifact machine.

Science too often trivializes the profound, answering questions that are very different from the ones that were asked.  To formulate a question suitable for scientific research too often requires us to forget what it was that we really wanted to know.

Hindsight is 20/20. Research. Plan. Execute. Evaluate. This makes your forward vision 20/20.

In the course of the history of natural science, it always happens that profound or true thoughts or true facts were always either distorted or flattened out. The danger, especially of distortion, is particularly great in the case of orgonomy. We must be scientific, we cannot be political in these matters. And I personally declare that I will be the first to fight with all my strength, with whatever I've got against such a distortion of our principles.

My ultimate research goal is to transform our human existence to just eating, sleeping, drinking, playing -- nevermind. --

"Not only does a flatland perspective hurt the people who work within

organizations, but current data suggests that this flatland perspective

If all people are unique, and if they are constantly changing each and every day, then all one can say about any social research finding is that it applied to that group of people on that given day, and given the propensity of humans to be different and to change, then it is unlikely that one would get the same results if one were to repeat the study.

When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research.

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.

Empirical confirmation of Darwin's theory did not prove forthcoming in the first few decades following its publication. Indeed, by the early twentieth century, many noted naturalists had come to regard Darwin's account of evolution by natural selection as a theoretical failure. Some even described their continuing commitment to evolution as a matter of faith, rather an ironic justification in light of the impending Scopes trial of 1925. "I suppose that everyone is familiar in outline with the theory of the origin of species which Darwin promulgated. Through the last fifty years this theme of the natural selection of favored races has been developed and expounded in writings innumerable. Favored races certainly can replace others. The argument is sound, but we are doubtful of its value. For us that debate stands adjourned. We go to Darwin for his incomparable collection of facts. We would fain emulate his scholarship, his width and his power of exposition, but to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority. We read his scheme of evolution as we would those of Leucretius or of Lamarck, delighting in their simplicity and courage." "Modern research lends not the smallest encouragement or sanction to the view that gradual evolution occurs by the transformation of masses of individuals, though that fancy has fixed itself on popular imagination."

One of the principal objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity.

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.

In the course of a debate with Lewis Terman: Without offering any data on all that occurs between conception and the age of kindergarten, they announce on the basis of what they have got out of a few thousand questionnaires that they are measuring the hereditary mental endowment of human beings. Obviously, this is not a conclusion obtained by research. It is a conclusion planted by the will to believe. It is, I think, for the most part unconsciously planted. . . . If the impression takes root that these tests really measure intelligence, that they constitute a sort of last judgment on the child's capacity, that they reveal "scientifically" his predestined ability, then it would be a thousand times better if all the intelligence testers and all their questionnaires were sunk in the Sargasso Sea.

An estimated 63 million people are feeding birds in their yards. Research by Metz Farms Wildlife Feeding Specialists of Grand Rapids, Michigan, also shows that $2.3 billion is spent on birdseed each year.

A research project in Australia, entitled "The Congruent Garden: an Investigation into the Role of the Domestic Garden in Satisfying Fundamental Human Needs," interviewed gardeners on the values of gardening in their everyday lives. The researchers established that gardens have the potential to satisfy nine basic human needs (subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, freedom) across four existential states (being, having, doing and interacting.)

In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

There is a central myth about British science and economic growth, and it goes like this: science breeds wealth, Britain is in economic decline, therefore Britain has not done enough science. Actually, it is easy to show that a key cause of Britain's economic decline has been that the government has funded too much science. . . . Post-war British science policy illustrates the folly of wasting money on research. The government decided, as it surveyed the ruins of war-torn Europe in 1945, that the future lay in computers, nuclear power and jet aircraft, so successive administrations poured money into these projects-to vast technical success. The world's first commercial mainframe computer was British, sold by Ferrranti in 1951; the world's first commercial jet aircraft was British, the Comet, in service in 1952; the first nuclear power station was British, Calder Hall, commissioned in 1956; and the world's first and only supersonic commercial jet aircraft was Anglo-French, Concorde, in service in 1976. Yet these technical advances crippled us economically, because they were so uncommercial. The nuclear generation of electricity, for example, had lost 2.1 billion pounds by 1975 (2.1 billion pounds was a lot then); Concord had lost us, alone, 2.3 billion pounds by 1976; the Comet crashed and America now dominates computers. Had these vast sums of money not been wasted on research, we would now be a significantly richer country.

There's a touch of the priesthood in the academic world, a sense that a scholar should not be distracted by the mundane tasks of day-to-day living. I used to have great stretches of time to work. Now I have research thoughts while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sure it's impossible to write down ideas while reading "curious George" to a two-year-old. On the other hand, as my husband was leaving graduate school for his first job, his thesis advisor told him, "You may wonder how a professor gets any research done when one has to teach, advise students, serve on committees, referee papers, write letters of recommendation, interview prospective faculty. Well, I take long showers."

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism - to steal from many is research.

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'

Research is a scientific activity dedicated to discovering what makes grass green.

Research teaches a man to admit he is wrong and to be proud of the fact that he does so, rather than try with all his energy to defend an unsound plan because he is afraid that admission of error is a confession of weakness when rather it is a sign of strength.

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.

Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

Study and research into truth often only serves to make us see by experience our natural ignorance.

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

(Concerning the allocation of research funds) It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists) . . . despise utility. But because . . . useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism. If you steal from two, it's research.

A psychologist once asked a group of college students to jot down, in thirty seconds, the initials of the people they disliked. Some of the students taking the test could think of only one person. Others listed as many as fourteen. The interesting fact that came out of this bit of research was this: Those who disliked the largest number were themselves the most widely disliked. When we find ourselves continually disliking others, we ought to bring ourselves up short and ask ourselves the question: "What is wrong with me."