Seth Shostak Science Quotations

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science.

You may not see massive UFO exhibits at your local science museum, but there's no dearth of saucer stories infesting my email. Every day, I receive several reports of alien sightings, extraterrestrial plans for Earth, and agitated screeds about the reluctance of scientists to take the whole subject seriously.

People don't learn science in movies. You don't go to the movies thinking, 'I hope I learn some quantum mechanics this afternoon.' But on the other hand, movies are instrumental and influential in getting young people interested in science.

The ideas of science germinate in a matrix of established knowledge gained by experiment; they are not lonesome thoughts, born in a rarified realm where no researcher has ever gone before.

It's worth noting that invoking God as the entity who set our universe in motion isn't contradicted by the data. Of course, scientists would say the supreme being hypothesis is faith, and outside the realm of science - that it's not amenable to experiment. But we currently have the same problem with the notion of parallel universes.

In the 19th century, if you had a basement lab, you could make major scientific discoveries in your own home. Right? Because there was all this science just lying around waiting for somebody to pick it up.

It's the default premise in science: If you observe something in nature only once, you assume that what you've seen is typical. That's because 'typical' is just another way of saying 'most probable.'

Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that's the result of 400 years of science, right? I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century you could become an expert on any field of science in an afternoon by going to a library, if you could find the library, right?

I think a lot of kids are interested in two science subjects: dinosaurs and aliens. The reason is almost genetic; we're hard-wired to be interested in things that might be a little dangerous.

Typically, only about 2 percent of the American populace tunes in to PBS's 'Nova' series - the most successful science show on the tube. 'Survivor' and 'X Factor' get twice the ratings.

Very few societies on Earth developed science as we know it today. On the other hand, the number is not zero - the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Maya did, among others. Once invented, science proved so useful that it spread like mold on a petri dish.

It seems obvious that if a species has the brainpower for speech, along with the sort of appendages that can manipulate a pair of pliers, it will eventually blunder into science, technology, and radio.