Popular Science Quotes

“For reasons I have yet to understand, many people don’t like chemicals, which might explain the perennial movement to rid foods of them. <...> Personally, I am quite comfortable with chemicals, anywhere in the universe. My favorite stars, as well as my best friends, are all made of them.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

“There is a species of primate in South America more gregarious than most other mammals, with a curious behavior.The members of this species often gather in groups, large and small, and in the course of their mutual chattering , under a wide variety of circumstances, they are induced to engage in bouts of involuntary, convulsive respiration, a sort of loud, helpless, mutually reinforcing group panting that sometimes is so severe as to incapacitate them. Far from being aversive,however, these attacks seem to be sought out by most members of the species, some of whom even appear to be addicted to them.

...the species in Homo sapiens (which does indeed inhabit South America, among other places), and the behavior is laughter.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained

“If you can't understand a study, the problem is with the study, not with you.”
― Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

“Silletti and I, for instance, chewed out cotton wads for the same amount of time. I produced .78 milliliters of stimulated saliva; she produced 1.4. She tried to reassure me. "It doesn't say anything about how good you are or how good I am with saliva."

"Erika, I'm a dried up husk."

"Don't say that, Mary.”
― Mary Roach, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

“Until relatively recently, and with a very few exceptions, cannibalism would have been regarded as anything but normal. As a result, until the last two decades of the 20th century, few scientists spent time studying a topic thought to have little, if any, biological significance. Basically, the party line was that cannibalism, when it did occur, was either the result of starvation to the stresses related to captive conditions. It was as simple as that. Or so we thought.”
― Bill Schutt, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

“The line from psychologists is, if you’ve seen it before, it hasn’t killed you yet.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction

“The aim here is not to separate fact from fantasy but to show how each embodies a distinct class of knowledge and how one is deeply implicated in the other.”
― Constance Penley

“The point of the prey being paralysed rather than killed, by the way, is that they don't decay but are eaten alive and are therefore fresh. It was macabre habit, in the related Ichneumon wasp, that provoked Darwin to write: 'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent god would have designedly created the Ich-neumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars...' He might as well have used the example of a french chef boiling lobsters alive to preserve their flavor.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“Lysenkoism may be useful only because it provides a lesson. Whether we like it or not, the days of the independent scientist and of independent science are about over. The more important science becomes in the lives of individuals and of nations, the more it will need popular support and will have to submit to social control. But the forms and techniques of this support and control have not yet been devised and tested. The problem is a new one. The Soviet rulers have tried a solution, but their solution has resulted in lysenkoism, and thus proved to be a dismal failure.”
― Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe

“We know the stories that led us to this moment. We know how actions of those who dealt with history's changes created our today. Now we are in a historic moment of our own, and it's our turn to guide how new technology determines the future.”
― Tom Wheeler, From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future

“As the collected stories of the human journey, history offers the fundamental lesson that the challenges we face today aren't unique. No matter how much we flatter ourselves with self-absorption, we are but the continuation of the human saga.”
― Tom Wheeler, From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future

“Included in the GSM standard for mobile devices was the ability to use the mobile network's control channel (the parhway that controls the call but doesn't carry the call itself) to send short alphanumeric messages. It was envisioned principally as a means for one-way communication from the company to the subscriber (such as "your bill is due"). That changed when the functionality was discovered by Norwegian teenagers in the late 1980s.”
― Tom Wheeler, From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future

“If we hadn't broken every single WHO rule many times over, we would never have defeated samllpox. Never. - Arita, leader of smallpox eradication effort”
― Laurie Garrett

“If he could do what he did -- and I'll show you what he did -- who else is doing what in the hospitals and laboratories that we may one day look to for our lives?”
― Brian Deer, The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines

“By the mid-1980s, [Stephen Jay Gould] had emerged as a major public figure, using his background as a paleontologist to dive into controversies with radical stances on the ways new species emerge and how evolutionary change comes about. His [popular history of life] college class was composed of around six hundred students who, taking it as a distributional requirement, were unlikely to become science majors. This audience proved an ideal focal group for Gould to try out his new theories and presentations. Every Tuesday and Thursday in the fall he held forth, lecturing with dramatic flourish to undergraduates who either sat rapt in the front rows or sprawled sleeping in the rear ones.”
― Neil Shubin, Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA

“...We are long overdue for an update to the empirical scientific evidence
that, despite our racial differences, demonstrates humankind’s overarching
shared foundations as biological, cultural, and social beings. Awareness
of the fascinating research unfolding in the arena of nature–nurture and the
human condition promises to be a step in that direction.”
― Alondra Oubré, Science in Black and White: How Biology and Environment Shape Our Racial Divide

“Today's language is yesterday's perceptual experience.”
― Max Louwerse, Keeping Those Words in Mind: How Language Creates Meaning

“Popular-science news about quantum mechanics is to me as baffling as it is frustrating. Hand me an equation, and I can deal with it. But if you tell me that quantum mechanics allows one to separate a cat from its grin or that an experiment shows "an irreconcilable mismatch between the friends and the Wigners," I'll back out of the room quietly before anyone demands I explain this mess. I have suffered through countless well-intended introductions to quantum mechanics featuring quantum shoes, quantum coins, quantum boxes, and entire zoos of quantum animals that went in and out of those boxes. If you actually understand those explanations, I salute you, because if I hadn't known already how quantum mechanics works, I still wouldn't know.”
― Sabine Hossenfelder, Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions

“The trials of evolution programme a human race for aggression, not wisdom. And once capitalism gets underway human relationships become regulated by systems that deliver behaviour into a killing zone of selfishness and greed. The Tension Dynamic, p165”
― Art Hardy, The Tension Dynamic: Can Humanity Navigate The Birth Canal?

“If I had to explain AI over coffee, I’d say this: imagine a super-intern who has read every encyclopedia, watched every YouTube video, and memorized every Wikipedia page."
Artificial Intelligence Explained: The Complete Beginner’s Guide – 50 Essential Answers by AI, Clarified for Humans”
― Stephen D. Carver

“Data is the fuel of AI. And just like any engine, the quality of what you put in determines how far and how smoothly it can go."
Artificial Intelligence Explained: The Complete Beginner’s Guide – 50 Essential Answers by AI, Clarified for Humans”
― Stephen D. Carver