Some quotes from some famous skeptics! Enjoy!

THE OFFICIAL TRUTH

SEE THE BOOK " THE EXPERTS SPEAK", BY CERF/NAVASKY, PANTHEON 1984, FOR MORE LIKE THESE.

"..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value." - committee advising Ferdinand
and Isabella regarding Columbus' proposal, 1486

"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones
fell from the sky" - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on hearing an eyewitness
report of falling meteorites.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy." - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his
project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." - Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." - Sir John Eric Ericksen,
British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to
us." - Western Union internal memo, 1876. I'VE HEARD ONE REPORT THAT THIS
QUOTE WAS A HOAX, THE INTERNAL MEMO WAS A RECENT FORGERY

"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being
unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true progress" - Sir
William Siemens, 1880, on Edison's announcement of a sucessful light bulb.

"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy." -
Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888

"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody
will use it, ever." - Thomas Edison, 1889

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H.
Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899. NO, THIS WAS A
MISQUOTE, HE NEVER SAID THIS. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER EVEN DEBUNKED THIS.


"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - physicist Albert. A.
Michelson, 1894


"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin,
president, Royal Society, 1895.


"It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying
machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere."
- Thomas Edison, 1895


"The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known
forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the
air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be." - astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906


"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." - Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men
are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war"
- Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in regards to use of tanks
in war.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools." - 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert
Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" - David
Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio in the 1920s.

"All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute swindler." "Doesn't know
what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What useful purpose will it
serve?" - Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration
of television.

"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd
lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists."
-A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H.M. Warner, Warner
Brothers, 1927.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932

"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who
expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is
talking moonshine" - Ernst Rutherford, 1933

"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents
difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the
notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent
appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility
of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished." Richard
van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's "Rockets
in Space", Nature, March 14, 1936

"Space travel is utter bilge!" -Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley, astronomer

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
[ debunked in "The Maverick and His Machine"]

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won't last out the year." - The editor in charge of business
books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"Space travel is bunk" -Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of
Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik

"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be
used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio
service inside the Unided States." -T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"But what... is it good for?" - Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken
Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn
better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." - A Yale University
management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing
reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal
Express Corp.)

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not
Gary Cooper." - Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading
role in"Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports
say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you
make." - Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields'
Cookies.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." -
Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3M
"Post-It" Notepads.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about
funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our
salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we
went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You
haven't got through college yet.'" - Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve
Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve
Wozniak's personal computer.

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all
of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You
just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable
condition of weight training." - Response to Arthur Jones, who solved
the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

THE OFFICIAL TRUTH

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

"All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute swindler." "Doesn't know
what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What useful purpose will it
serve?" - Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration
of television.

the first three are the only ones that are wrong. the rest are perfectly logical responses.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

The original post itself shows a sincere lack of imagination. A simple copy/paste from the site linked. Not a single commentary from the OP.

 

Are you saying that those first three quotes are not valid quotes from the accredited people named?
And as far as 'perfectly logical responses', I would say...
Exactly! Therein lies the rub..

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has
forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein

Often one and the same, eh?
I would have a difficult time, though, accusing many of the 'names' below as lacking imagination.. Einstein for one... who valued his sense of 'fantasy' over his talent for absorbing and assimilating information (rationality)!

 

Two posts from the OP and we are all still left to wonder what the point is.

 

And SkinWalker, you pathological noxious little thread hijacking troll, as you now inhabit my ignore list, any further communication between us is at an end.
Good riddance.
Have a nice day.

 

Thank you. Now I'll be free to debunk all your nonsense without your ad hominem responses distracting me.

And Nameless still didn't give any sort of point to the thread.

 

I am saying that the first quotes I mentioned showed closed mindedness, the rest were good questions. one should always ask "whats the use" sort of questions before doing things. if you invent or discover something, you should always think about possible applications.

 

one of the purposes served by a thread like this is see all our wannabe skeptics tripping over themselves in a mad rush to go on the defensive. pretending there is no relevance in comparing the op's worthless prattle to their own is the height of disinginuity.

try not to suffer so openly

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

I understand, Cato, but the way I see it is 'veritas ars veritas' which is supposed to mean 'truth for truth's sake'.
I try to uncover truth/reality because it is truth/reality that interests me. After uncovering 'truth', applications always seem to present themselves. Finding a use for a functioning airplane is simple once one is perfected.
Unless it is not 'science' but 'technology' that one is 'performing', then, focus must remain on pragmatism and function until 'perfected'.

 

if it was up to edison we would be getting direct current from our outlets

not a quote but interesting

 

This has to be one of my favourite quotes:

"Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."
- Richard Feynman

 

That quotation applies to most (if not all) science, not just physics. No one stays in academia for the money – the pay is half that of comparable jobs in industry whilst working more hours. No one stays in academia for the perks – there are none. Academic scientists do it for the love of it. They do it because it’s a ‘calling’.<P>

 

I love those quotes, because they show how science moves on despite those who would stick to the status quo. Of course, it neglects to mention all the 'it won't work' inventions that actually didn't work ... and there are many. A prime example of scientific evolution trimming away reality to better and better approximations.

If you listen carefully you can hear that still, small voice - "poverty ... poverty ... but you get to play with cool particle accelerators!"

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

What's most disturbing to me is how often scientists themselves claim to have reached the end of a line of inquiry. Scientists are trained to be skeptics, and as such, we should be the last to make declaritive statements about the extent of discovery. Certainly, the path to psuedoscience lies in the manipulation of open minds, but so dues the future. We should remain skeptical of limitations above all else, while maintaining healthy skepticism of any and all claims to truth.

 

Well, I'm right here right now going for membership of that distinguished company quoted in the nameless's first post. I read the new findings about Dark Matter yesterday. Apparently Dark Matter comes in 1000 light year across chunks, it radiates nothing and is totally transparent, yet exists at a very high temperature, it moves very fast, and finally, it seems that, because of Dark Matter, the Milky Way is larger than the Andromeda galaxy.

I can't help it, there is scarcely a thing that has been claimed for Dark Matter that I can't respond to with the single word "codswallop!"

 

Hmph. Dark matter is an area of research still undergoing investigation. A more mature response would be "This is interesting, but just now they are still tying things down, so I shall not waste any time looking at it until they are more certain"
Unless you are engaged in the actual research.

 

I just read (in New Scientist or Astronomy) that dark matter comes in small chunks 20m across, some of which fall into neutron stars and cause them to blow up.
While guthrie's response is measured and perhaps accurate. I prefer a modifcation of Silas's remark - entertaining codswallop.

 

where did the word "codswallop" come from? where can i aquire codswallop? how do i make codswallop? is there a recipe? it does sound tasty....