QUOTATIONS

  "The plural of anecdote is not data" (B. Goldacre, Bad Science, Fourth State, London, 2009, p. 65)
[1-12 January 2010]

  "The idea is to try and give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another" (Richard P. Feynman)
[12-31 January 2010]

  "From Avarice thus, from Luxury and War
Sprang heavenly Science; and from Science Freedom"
(S.T. Coleridge, Religious Musings, 1794)
[1-22 February 2010]

  "Basic research is like shooting an arrow into the air and, where it lands, painting a target" (Homer B. Atkins)
[23 February - 26 March 2010]

  "Sapere aude" (Horace)
[27 March - 8 April 2010]

  "Math is hard. Let's go shopping!" (Barbie)
[8-21 April 2010]

  "A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance" (Bertrand Russell)
[22 April - 12 May 2010]

  "There is nothing fundamentally wrong with publications in 'foreign' languages" (P. Knipschild, BMJ, 209, 719, 2007)
[13-31 May 2010]

  "They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea" (Francis Bacon)
[1-23 June 2010]

  "I learned many years ago never to waste time trying to convince my colleagues" (Albert Einstein)
[24 June - 7 July 2010]

  "We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intelect in matters of the soul" (Robert Musil, found in J.A. Paulos, Once uppon a number. The hidden mathematical logics of series)
[8-18 July 2010]

  "Nature, it seems, is the popular game
      For milliards and milliards and milliards
      Of particles playing their infinite game
      Of billiards and billiards and billiards"
(Piet Hein, found in P. Ball, Critical mass. How one thing leads to another)
[19 July - 17 August 2010]

  "In questo nostro Secolo è un delitto gravissimo ... il trattar materie che ... facciano sbadigliare; desiderandosi, che le Scienze ... ricevano per l'industria ingegnosa dello Scrittore ... piacevoli tratteggi d'amenità" * (Eusebio Sguario, 1746)
"In this century of ours, it is an iniquitous crime to treat matters that bore to tears. Hence science should received from the industrious ingenuity of the writer some pleasing embellishement and entrartaining discourse"
[18-29 August 2010]

  "When judging research, we were taught to ask three questions (...): 'do I understand it, do I believe it, do I care?' though not always in that order" (F. Godlee, BMJ 2010;341:c4662)
[30 August - 25 September 2010]

  "It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual ilumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science" (Charles Darwin)
[26 September - 21 October 2010]

  "Throw down the heavy burden.
      The heavy burden is dirty.
      Away with it!
      Rip it up!
      What's useless should die.
      Tear the wadding from the padded clothes."
(A. Mishima, Bitter Sea. The Human Cost of Minamata Disease. Kosei Publishing Co., Tokyo, 1992, p. 17)
[22 October - 18 November 2010]

  "Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both" (Steve Schneider)
[19 November - 13 December 2010]

  "Ordinary people and even students of mathematics have real trouble with understanding that a faulty argument leading to a true result is faulty." (Andrej Bauer commenting on "A new and interesting form of wrong" in B. Goldrake blog "Bad Science", 27/11/2010)
[14-31 December 2010]