Science Authors

"Someone once said that he had made many mistakes in life, but never because he knew too much."

"Our decision rules determine which way we tilt, but we should not comfort ourselves with the fantasy that both unwanted outcomes can be avoided—in the face of genuine uncertainty, that’s just not possible. If you want to acquit all the innocent, you will also acquit some of the guilty. If you want to convict all the guilty, you will convict some who are innocent. You can’t have it both ways."

"People seem to flinch at the word probability—it has too many syllables. Besides, it sounds mathematical, and it’s become politically correct in our country to be proud of not knowing any mathematics. (We’re already paying the price for that.)"

"It is fashionable in modern America to sneer at mathematics, nowhere more so than in sports."

"This author is a supporter of at least minimal literacy requirements for voting—having illiterate people vote may seem perfect democracy, but it leads to bad decisions—and he has been called many unflattering names as a result. But unless we bring some skills to the public decision-making process we will make terrible and costly mistakes. It is not a simple world we live in, and our survival as a nation or society is not guaranteed by any natural law."

"Those who proclaim so loudly and self-righteously that diversity strengthens a society will have trouble finding historical support for the view."

"It is always a good strategy for two players to join forces (or conspire) against the third, and to settle their own differences when he has been done in. With suitable variations, that lesson applies to games with more and more players, to say nothing, alas, of life."

"In our modern societies, in the United States and elsewhere, there are simply too many ways to stop things, and too few to keep them going. As recently as forty years ago, in this author’s direct memory, that wasn’t true. (If the Interstate Highway System were to be proposed now, it wouldn’t stand a chance.)"

"Decision making by large groups can never lead to venturesome decisions."

"On a global level, there is no threat to human survival greater than that posed by world overpopulation—paradoxical though that may seem—and it is abundantly clear that consensus decision making is ineffective for dealing with that. Some kind of “solution” is nonetheless unavoidable, and is certain to be ugly. To say that there is no visible world leadership on that transcendental question is to understate the case. Optimists on the population problem don’t measure progress in terms of a decrease in population, or even a decrease in the rate of increase, but in terms of a decrease in the rate of increase of the rate of increase."

"In addition to photographing flowers extensively on both sides the Atlantic, I have been fortunate to work in locations as diverse as South Africa, China, the Galápagos Islands, the high Arctic, the , and the Himalayas, and to participate in an unforgettable pony trek to Kashmir. Photographing garden flowers may not involve such intrepid expeditions, but it can be equally challenging and rewarding nonetheless. In fact, the current vogue of s has blurred the traditional distinctions between garden flowers and ."

"As the sun dips towards the horizon, a huge white ice arch becomes suffused with a pink glow. In front of this amazing backdrop hundreds of s huddle together as the temperature plummets to -30ºC. It had taken me almost 2 weeks to reach this part of in an and several hours trudging over the ice to reach this spot, but I knew this moment would live with me forever. As I savoured the pristine wilderness, I reflected that had I chosen another path as a career I would never have experienced this magical moment. By the time I married Martin (a fellow zoologist) at the age of 23, I presumed I would carve out a career as a for life. After all, I had a zoology degree and had been doing marine biological research for 3 years. I never dreamt I would abandon my love for the marine world and develop an even greater passion for photography. Yet, it was only a few years later that I took the plunge to work as a freelance ."

"flowers show various adaptations to attract s—in the form of colour, pattern or scent or a combination of these factors. Flowers which are pollinated by butterflies and moths are usually heavily scented, especially those which are visited at night."

"Colour is of prime importance to life on earth: plants use it to attract s and to aid dispersal of their fruit; animals use it to attract mates, as s and as ."

"From the discovery of , we know that the once existed over a much larger range extending into Burma and northern Vietnam in the south, in China almost as far north as Beijing, the capital, and near Hong Kong and Shanghai in the east. Changes in climate reduced some of the panda's range, but in the twentieth century, the prime factor has been the rapid encroachment of the human population on the . As native forests have been logged or clear-cut for agriculture, suitable panda habitat has continued to shrink, until today it is confined to six mountain ranges running southwest from south of to south of along the eastern edge of the ."

"My training was basically as an ecologist—for is largely applied ecology—and, since serving in Ghana for 14 years in the 1930s and 1940s. I have been back 14 times to East, South and West Africa. Even when I started work, it was already clear that the arid land such as the could not be safely occupied other than by s, who with their flocks and herds of grazers and browsers can use small patches of mixed vegetation scattered over a wide area, seldom causing anything more than limited short-term degradation, for the nomads had worked out a '."

"When Attenborough joined the , in 1952, what were then called “animal programs” were presented by the superintendent of the London Zoo, a Mr. George Cansdale. Once a week, Mr. Cansdale would bring a selection of more or less compliant creatures to the BBC studio. He “put them on a table covered with a doormat,” Attenborough remembers in the preface to his new book, Adventures of a Young Naturalist, “where they sat blinking in the intense lights.”"

"Some animals lend themselves to use in idioms—the goose is a good example of this. As long ago as 1547 a simpleton was being referred to as a goose; presumably a domestic goose, for a wild goose is anything but a fool."

"... by the third millennium the ns had developed a type which is shown in art of that period. Egyptian monuments of at least one thousand years earlier show dogs very like the modern and others like the ."

"... every shark is a survivor of an extremely archaic race, older even than the , and there is no need to describe what everyone, and especially the ocean-going seamen, think of sharks."

"... we have to remember that the description given us by Herodotus represents the entry of the into . It is the starting-point of the phoenix myth as we know it today, the foundation of the story told by Métral, and the only solid evidence we have concerning the phoenix itself."

"There are certain very small flies, known as . The females of this species carry a dagger at the end of the abdomen, a dual-purpose tubular dagger. This dagger is known as the , or in more common terms, the organ for laying eggs. The female ichneumon stabs a in the back and lays an egg in its body. The egg hatches, the grub emerges and feeds on the green fly."

"Some territories are used for feeding alone and these are defended outside the breeding season. The is a well-known example. . In winter male and female occupy separate territories for feeding only."

"If you think about the plethora of organisations out there and public sector bodies, just making it easier for employees is a huge opportunity to gain productivity and just to not do some of the grunt work."

"So we work with Wimbledon, the US Masters, the Open and we just did a big piece with Sevilla Football Club, where we're helping them with talent scouting using AI"

"The second is the data and the insights that you gather from AI belong to the Creator and not the IT partner."

"But with Wimbledon and the others, you know, we're using AI for AI commentary, for example, predicting who's going to go through to the next round"

"That's important because, you know, companies are putting a lot of their own intellectual property into this, and then the third is the one I mentioned earlier, which is you've got to have AI that's true, transparent, explainable and free from harmful content and biases.”"

"We have some really important principles, one of which is that AI works alongside humans, so it doesn't replace them"

"That's really more about how do you drive a fan engagement, not just at the tournament but in the rest of the world where people are watching and trying to engage, so some quite interesting applications."

"Science has wonders far transcending those of superstition, and they are poor philosophers who try to bring Nature down to the level of their small capacities instead of striving to exalt those capacities to the height of creation's truth. No savage, worshipping the most preposterous idol, ever believed greater absurdities than a modern sceptic, who makes his small modicum of reason the standard by which to measure the boundless universe."

"After June 20, morning temperatures were between 45 and 50 degrees and slightly higher some days. The highest temperature in June was on the 27th, 60 degrees at eight in the morning. The mid-day temperatures average about 5 degrees higher. Insects were countless by latter part of June. Butterflies of several species, bumblebees, spiders, several species of gnat, flies, and mosquitoes were common. The end of June was characterized by rapidly melting snow, nesting activities of the birds, and the quick development of vegetation, Grasses, in particular, made fast headway in moist depressions. Actual bloom was not particularly noteworthy until early July. On June 28 the white heather, ', began sparingly to bloom. On June 30 the mountain avens, ', and the Arctic blueberry, ', suddenly burst into bloom. The Arctic Labrador tea, ', was just on the point of bloom on June 30. The last snowstorm of the season occurred on June 17 and the first rain the following day."

"' Linnaeus. Mallard.—This is the predominant duck of the region, but it has only slight numerical superiority over the . Mallards were omnipresentin the waters of the entire territory, often varying only slightly in relative abundance from one lake to another. In only a few lakes were its numbers surpassed by any other species of ducks. In relation to all other ducks, its ratio varied from as low as 11 per cent to as high as 42, the average for 32 lakes being 26.3 per cent."

"The food of the chiefly consists of , especially the plentiful, widely distributed . These are caught by waiting their appearance at breathing holes in the ice, by crouching at the edges of floes, or by creeping up to the animal as it sleeps on the ice. The Eskimo assert that the polar bear also catches seals and young by seizing them in the water, from underneath, and dragging them onto an ice pan."

"Galileo approached the modern scientific outlook more nearly than did Kepler. Like Kepler, he believed that Nature lent itself to mathematical description, but he does not seem to have regarded the fulfillment of mathematical relations as the cause of phenomena. He regarded mathematics rather as the one and only true key that would introduce order and coherence into our sense impressions."

"If an entity is to be considered as a scientific entity we must be able to say what would enable us to detect it. This is the basis of Einstein's objection to Newton's . There are no physical operations, according to Einstein, which enable us to distinguish absolute space. As regards absolute time, Newton himself confessed that there may be no natural processes which enable us to measure it. We can never, in the nature of things, say whether we are dealing with absolute time or not. Both these entities, therefore, are described by Einstein as metaphysical, with no real place in science."

"Science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and...there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts...Why is it that science forms a closed system? Why is is that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with."

"The lives largely on s throughout the year. These they easily catch during the summer. In winter they dig through the snow for them or catch them as they wander on the surface. may constitute part of the diet and, rarely, the , especially the young. In winter, foxes are often very thin, thus indicating their difficulty of making a living during the season."

"Hawaiian Islands, Max 2.4 ... ... May be discoloured reddish or greenish by algal growth. • Foreflippers proportionately very short and broad with small claws; hindflippers long and slim."

"When appointed to the in 1935 he was placed in the Bird Room, where he started as Assistant Keeper and retired in 1968 as Senior Scientific Officer in charge of the Bird Room and Deputy Keeper of the Zoology Department. Apart from war service with the , his entire career was dedicated to traditional museum ornithology. He ran collecting expeditions to South Sudan in 1938–1939 and South West Africa in 1950–1951, each substantially enhancing African collections in the Museum; that led to publication of a comprehensive report on the birds of the region. ... His professional career culminated in a sponsored mostly by Major Harold Hall, an Australian philanthropist. That was the last systematic collecting of Australian birds by an overseas institute, collecting in all parts of the continent and enriching the British Museum collection of Australian birds by some 6,500 specimens (skins, skeletons, and fluid). The leader of the first expedition in 1962–1963, Jim’s party discovered a new species of bird () in . In that expedition, his wife Betty accompanied him as doctor and caterer for the team."

"In Israel, the 1980s and early 1990s were marked by a core of c.15 young , among them Y. Baser, A. Ber, A. Ben Dov, E. Dovrat, Y. Golan, O. Horin, R. Mizrachi, E. Shochat and myself. From a European perspective, activity mostly centred on the migration hotspot of in the south, to which thousands of birders flocked each spring. The Eilat International Birdwatching Centre was founded in 1984, but prior to that the above-mentioned observers made casual visits to Eilat, mainly between summer and winter, especially to study and to find s."

"If you are fortunate to have the chance to examine a recently dead bird, even one brought home from the poulterer with intact, spend a little time examining the s carefully and note down various points of interest."

"In the 1960s, IBM's chairman, Thomas Watson Sr., began the Fellows Program, in which he appointed Fellows (he called them his "wild ducks") for five years to be "dreamers, heretics, mavericks, gadflies, and geniuses." Their remit was simply to "shake up the system." The Fellows Program has been supremely successful. Only some 165 scientists were appointed, but five of these won Nobel Prizes. General Electric and Bell Laboratories ran similar programs. In 1980, as I have mentioned, BP launched Venture Research, arguably one of the most ambitious and imaginative exploratory research initiatives in industrial history, and supported it for 10 years."

"On the atomic scale, we do not understand gravity and its relationship with Nature's other forces. At the other end of the scale, current dogma maintains that the universe was created at some specific moment some 13.6 billion years ago. It then requires an almost immediate but transient expansion at speeds vastly exceeding the velocity of light in order that predictions from current theories can be made compatible with what we actually observe."

"Horny projections which look more like teeth are found in the beaks of a special group of ducks represented in Britain by and , sometimes known as "sawbills". In these birds the beak is narrow and the "teeth" are used for gripping fish."

"This impressive book is an invaluable, fully illustrated, wildlife guide for tourists and scientists visiting the and . ... ... The individual species accounts are preceded by a general account of groups of related species, such as s, es,etc. Species identification is aided by beautiful colour plates (35 in total) by the wildlife artist Brett Jarrett, as well as accompanying colour photographs of high quality. The whole book is actually packed with excellent colour photographs (almost 600) of birds, s and landscapes. A distribution map is presented for most species."

"The may easily be mistaken for a male in flight. They are identical in size and are similarly barred below. The illusion is often fostered in late summer by young cuckoos being seen in flight with their foster-parents, much smaller birds ..."

"One of the areas whose birds have been given rather less attention than most is the arid western regions of South Africa. For various reasons it has been, and still is, an inhospitable country, in spite of the kindly disposition of its thinly scattered population. Its political history, at times somewhat turbulent; its desolate and fog-bound coastline, now made doubly inapproachable because of protective measures against illicit diamond prospecting; its vast hinterland of and ; and its own arid mountains and plains have discouraged travellers and ornithological pursuits. Although the birds of this region have been studied relatively infrequently most of the species represented have been known for a long time. The first ornithological survey of any importance took place as early as 1783-5 when the French naturalist, , made his second great journey ‘into the interior parts of Africa from the ’."

"Macdonald selects twelve aspects of the life and behaviour of birds, illustrating them with Australian examples. Topics covered are Territorial Behaviour, , Population Problems, Post-Breeding Activities, , Distribution, Habitats and Adaptations, , Other Important Features, Various Systems, the Senses, and Variation and . The level of detail on each subject is well suited to the intended audience and avoids both superficiality and excessive detail. Indeed, beginners are far from the only birdwatchers who would profit from reading this book. The list of references, although short, is useful and reasonably comprehensive and would give the interested reader a useful introduction to the literature on a particular topic."

"It's been forgotten that we did not need special arrangements for finding the Einsteins in the past. There was enough flexibility in the system to allow them to emerge, but that's been removed in the quest for efficiency."