Top 9 Quotes & Sayings by Steven Novella

History is strewn with ideas that were intuitive and made sense at the time, but were also hopelessly wrong.

Questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations.

Anecdotes generate questions, not answers.

The work of a science blogger is largely comprised of correcting and criticizing bad science news reporting.

Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.

There is no skepticism without science and the scientific method. It's about how we know what we know.

Science is about the process; it's not about the conclusion.

What do you think science is? There is nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. So which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?

Some claims deserve ridicule, and anything less falsely elevates them.