Popularity Quotes (4 quotes)
Drosophila melanogaster Meigen…has in recent years come to be widely used as a laboratory animal, especially in the study of heredity. Its short life-cycle, great productivity, and the ease with which it may be bred have been chiefly responsible for making it so popular for this purpose.
In The North American Species of Drosophila (1921), 1.
Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.
(1846.) In Bence Jones (ed.), The Life and Letters of Michael Faraday (1870), Vol. 2, 228. Faraday made this statement to the Secretary of the Royal Institution who consulted him regarding evening lectures. Faraday’s reply began with, “I see no objection to evening lectures if you can find a fit man to give them. As to popular lectures (which at the same time are to be respectable and sound), none are more difficult to find.”
Mr. Hillaire Belloc has pointed out that science has changed greatly, and for the worse, since it became popular. Some hundred years ago, or more, only very unusual, highly original spirits were attracted to science at all; scientific work was therefore carried out by men of exceptional intelligence. Now, scientists are turned out by mass production in our universities.
In Science is a Sacred Cow (1950), 23-24.
The word, “Vitamine,” served as a catchword which meant something even to the uninitiated, and it was not by mere accident that just at that time, research developed so markedly in this direction. Our view as to the fortunate choice of this name is strengthened, on the one hand, because it has become popular (and a badly chosen catchword, like a folksong without feeling, can never become popular), and on the other, because of the untiring efforts of other workers to introduce a varied nomenclature, for example, “accessory food factors, food hormones, water-soluble B and fat-soluble A, nutramine, and auximone” (for plants). Some of these designations are certainly not better, while others are much worse than “Vitamine.”
The Vitamines translated by Harry Ennis Dubin (1922), 18.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) --
Carl Sagan
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