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" There are checks and balances in science. There's somebody checking the people doing the science, and then there's somebody who checks the checkers and somebody who checks the checker's checkers. "

Michael Shermer

Doing

People

Science

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" One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements. "

Michael Shermer

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" Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training. "

" In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious. "

" As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past, those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce. "

" Ever since college, I have been a libertarian - socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. "

" When alien abductees recount to me their stories, I do not deny that they had a real experience. "

" We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage. "

" Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant. "

" No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process. "

" In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin. "

" Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life. "

" Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry. "

" Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance. "

" For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals. "

" In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be. "

" We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. "

" Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion. "

" Conspiracies are a perennial favorite for television producers because there is always a receptive audience. "

" Mysteries once thought to be supernatural or paranormal happenings - such as astronomical or meteorological events - are incorporated into science once their causes are understood. "

" Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable. "

" But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science. "

" The reason is that in a group, individual errors on either side of the true figure cancel each other out. "

" I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful. "

" We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs. "