Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
Alan AldaRead
If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to get more attention - in fact, I'm told that they do get more attention - than the one who's a little more stiff about it. Well, that's not good for science.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Effective communication is essential in science; those who present better can overshadow equally valid work.
This quote emphasizes the importance of communication skills in the scientific community. Alan Alda points out that a scientist who can engage and connect with an audience often receives more attention than a more reserved colleague, regardless of the merits of their research. This highlights the potential drawbacks in the scientific discourse when presentation skills can influence recognition and credibility, suggesting that the ability to communicate complex ideas simply and engagingly is as crucial as the science itself.
Themes
CommunicationSciencePresentationAudienceAttention
In practice
Example use cases
In a seminar on scientific research, you could use this quote to stress the importance of engaging with the audience.
More from Alan Alda
All quotes →Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.
Alan AldaRead
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Alan AldaRead
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
Alan AldaRead
If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
Alan AldaRead
I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
Alan AldaRead
Similar quotes
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
George WillRead
...as our friend Zach has often noted, in our days those who do the best for astronomy are not the salaried university professors, but so-called dillettanti, physicians, jurists, and so forth.Lamenting the fragmentary time left to a professor has remaining after fulfilling his teaching duties.
Carl Friedrich GaussRead
At no period of [Michael Faraday's] unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected.
Abraham FlexnerRead
What, then, is this blue sky, which certainly does exist, and which veils from us the stars during the day?
Camille FlammarionRead
Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
Robert K. MertonRead
There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.
J. Robert OppenheimerRead