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Book: Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk
Quotes of Book: Nonsense on Stilts: How to
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  1. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    Or maybe, another explanation goes, we are in fact surrounded by ETs and simply don't know it, perhaps because they decided to make the solar system a natural reserve, a place where other races can go and see what it is like to be in the infancy of civilization {appropriately, this has been nicknamed the "zoo hypothesis"}.
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  2. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    The many-worlds theory basically maintains that the reason quantum mechanics seems so strange is because we have access to only one of an infinite number of worlds. From our narrow perspective, the output of certain measurements{like that of the double-slit experiment} seems random and probabilistic, but that is an artifact of the fact that, literally, we don't have the full picture.
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  3. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.-Adam Smith
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  4. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    It is instructive to note that different cultures "discovered" completely different constellations in the sky, a fact that is more consistent with the idea that constellations are a whimsical projection of the human mind than a reflection of astronomic reality.
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  5. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    …the boundaries separating science, nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than {or, for that matter, most scientists} would have us believe. There is, in other words, no litmus test.
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  6. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    These and similar examples are easy enough to uncover, and they make two crucial points: first, good science does not require experiments, it can be done with an intelligent use of observational evidence; second, there is more than one way to do science, depending on the nature of the questions and the methods typical of the field.
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  7. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    one does not need experiments to do science. While this claim may sound strange and counterintuitive at first, a moment's reflection will show that it is obviously true: astronomers do not conduct experiments, and yet we think of astronomy as solidly situated within the sciences, not the humanities or the pseudosciences. Why? Because astronomers can carry out the two fundamental activities that, jointly considered, truly characterize a science: systematic observations and the construction and testing of hypotheses.
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  8. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    the nature of science is not that of a steady, linear progression toward the Truth, but rather a tortuous road, often characterized by dead ends and U-turns, and yet ultimately inching toward a better, if tentative, understanding of the natural world.
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  9. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    CEI in 1992 "advised" the Food and Drug Administration to approve recombinant bovine somatotropin, which is a bioengineered growth hormone. Now surely such recommendation would be accompanied by the further suggestion of labeling the resulting products so that consumer choice- that ultimate driver of market forces-could be openly exercised? Think again: the CEI argued that mandatory labeling of dairy products is "inappropriate" because it violates the First Amendment {which includes the right to free speech-of the cows?}.
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  10. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    British astronomer royal Richard Woolley, who in 1956 said, "All this talk about space travel is utter bilge, really."10 Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit the earth just five years later.
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  11. Massimo Pigliucci _ Nonsense on Stilts: How to

    It seems to me trivially true that particle physics does in fact deal with the simplest objects in the entire universe: atoms and their constituents. At the opposite extreme, biology takes on the most complex things known to humanity: organisms made of billions of cells, and ecosystems whose properties are affected by tens of thousands of variables."
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