The Exchange, April 2006

Issue 13(2), May 2006

In this issue

Ten tips for internationalizing your medical and scientific writing

By M. Katherine (Kit) Brown (kit.brown@comgenesis.com)

Providing medical and scientific information to an international audience adds complexity to your documentation development process because of different terminology, different clinical and other best practices, and different regulations. This article provides 10 tips for internationalizing your writing in this challenging environment. As you read these tips, it is important to realize that effective translators do not translate word for word, but rather concept by concept, so the intent and meaning must be very clear in the English if you want a high-quality translation.

1. Be sensitive to cultural differences in behaviors and in appropriateness: Be careful how you picture men and women interacting (e.g., in some cultures, it is inappropriate for women to go to a male doctor and vice versa), what animals you show (e.g., pigs are considered unclean in Muslim and Jewish societies), and so on. In the so-called developed countries, we tend to take for granted that certain things will be readily available (e.g., refrigeration, instrumentation, imaging technologies); however, much of the world has limited access to these things. For example, if your company is designing a vaccine for distribution in rural Africa or rural South America, the vaccine needs to remain stable at warm temperatures because refrigeration is not an option in many areas. Avoid sports metaphors, which tend to be very culture-specific. Say “worldwide” instead of “U.S. and the rest of the world”.

2. Write for the strictest regulations: If your product or topic is subject to regulations, work with the regulatory team and identify which regulations have the strictest requirements, then write to meet those requirements. In doing so, you will cover most of the regulatory issues that are common to all locales.

3. Identify and flag content that is specific to a particular region or country: You don’t want to waste time and money translating a regulatory paragraph that is specific to one region. For example, informed consent requirements are different in the U.S. than they are in Canada and the European Union. You would not want to translate paragraphs about U.S. regulations on informed consent into all other languages; instead, use the appropriate language for each country. In another case, technical requirements may differ. For example, you may have electrical requirements that are different for Japan than for other locales. In that case, you would present those requirements in Japanese, but not in other languages. Clearly marking such special paragraphs helps the localization team organize and perform their work more effectively, and prevents misunderstandings.

4. Work with your in-country reviewers and localization team to develop a glossary of preferred terms and translations: This is particularly important in medical and scientific writing because errors in interpretation can have such dire consequences. By developing a glossary early in the project, you can help ensure consistency and accuracy during the translation process.

5. Set up your documents to accommodate text expansion and the printing needs for both A4 and U.S. letter sized paper: Localization and translation typically cause the text in the document to expand by 30% or more, compared with the English version. This expansion is particularly problematic with margin notes and narrow columns because text in the other languages often breaks differently across lines. European A4 paper is longer and narrower than North American letter size. To eliminate the need for reformatting documents so that they can print appropriately, you can set up your templates with a custom page size of 8.26 ´ 11 inches (210 ´ 279 mm).

6. Provide the metric measurements first and the Imperial measurements in parentheses: The U.S. is the only country that regularly uses Imperial measurements for scientific and medical information. Putting those measurements in parentheses makes it easier for the localization team to strip them out during the translation process. Of course, as the example of the crashed NASA Mars probe illustrated, conversions between measurement units must be precise and must be checked carefully.

7. Use job titles, not names, and the correct date form in examples: It’s very difficult to avoid stereotyping, or conversely, to avoid leaving someone out when you use specific names. Similarly, it's necessary to distinguish between actual dates (e.g., a regulatory deadline) and conditional dates (e.g., step 2 can only occur after step 1 is complete, whenever that may occur). Using job titles and the appropriate date format clarifies who’s doing what and when.

8. Use numbered callouts and a legend table instead of embedding text in graphics: Text embedded in graphics will not get pulled into a translation memory system and must be translated manually. This means that for every graphic with embedded text, the translator must open that source graphic file, modify the text, often adjust the graphic to accommodate the longer text strings, and save the new graphic. If you have 100 graphics for a document being localized into 20 languages, and each graphic requires 1 hour to localize in each language, failing to use the table approach adds 2000 hours to your localization process. Using numbered callouts and a legend table allows you to pull the table information directly into the translation memory, thereby reducing the time required to do the localization and eliminating the need for the translator to work with the graphic file.

9. Avoid acronyms and inappropriate jargon: Many languages do not use acronyms and the ones that do use acronyms use different ones in their own language, so avoid these abbreviations wherever possible. Unless certain technical terms have become universally understood, jargon makes the English more difficult to comprehend, so avoid using it when possible. If you must use jargon, be sure to include the term in the glossary with a detailed and clear definition.

10. Keep it simple: If you have sentences with more than 25 words, determine whether it's necessary to break them up into smaller chunks. Use commas liberally to clarify relationships. Serial commas are particularly important, as are commas that indicate dependent clauses. Hyphenate compound adjectives to clarify what is modifying what. Use active voice and write clearly and concisely. If the antecedent is not clear, use the noun instead of the pronoun. Check for misplaced modifiers.

The key point in each tip is that consistency of terminology, tone, style, and syntax make it easier for the translators to provide an accurate and culturally appropriate language product. As another benefit, following these simple rules helps you write more effectively for international audiences, and makes your English more clear and easier to understand for native speakers.

Kit (kit.brown@comgenesis.com) is an Associate Fellow of STC, as well as Snake River Chapter president and manager of the International Technical Communication SIG. She has 16 years of experience working in multicultural environments in the medical, life sciences, and computer industries. Kit also holds a BS in Biology and an MS in Technical Communication, both from Colorado State University.

Let’s start planning now

Kathie Gorski (kgorski@execpc.com), Scientific Communication SIG Manager

I have always found the STC annual conference a worthwhile event that stimulates, refreshes, and rewards its participants. I was not able to attend this year, but I am already starting to think about next year’s event—specifically about how our SciCom SIG can help develop a strong program of speakers that will make our members want to head to the lovely city of Minneapolis in May 2007.

I encourage you to start thinking about next year’s event as well. What topic(s) within the area of scientific communication would you like to hear about at the conference? What topic(s) might you be interested in presenting to attendees? What STC luminaries would you like us to invite to speak? What do you think of the idea of developing a progression based around scientific communication? In case you’re wondering, a "progression" is like a buffet: it's a room filled with six to eight tables, each with a different speaker. Each speaker has about 20 minutes to present and discuss their information. Every 20 minutes, attendees get up and move to a different table; speakers remain in place and repeat their presentation to the next group of attendees. A conference progression will typically last 90 minutes, and thus you can't "eat it all", so you pick and choose carefully. (Thanks to Geoff Hart for the buffet analogy.)

Any other ideas about how to make next year’s conference more valuable for our SciCom SIG members? Please send your top-of-mind responses to me, and also tuck these questions away to ponder over the next several months, as we begin to discuss possibilities. As thoughts and suggestions come to you, send them my way.

Editorial: The ethics of experimentation

by Geoff Hart (ghart@videotron.ca)

"[H]uman beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of milllions of years. This experiment, if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes determining weather and climate."—Roger Revelle and Hans Suess

[Editor's note: The source of this quote appears to be the following paper: Revelle, R., Suess, H.E. 1957. Carbon dioxide exchange between atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase of atmospheric CO2 during the past decades. Tellus 9:18-27. Since I don't have a copy of this paper, I can't confirm this. Corrections gratefully received.—GH]

It's hard to imagine anyone living in the modern world who has not heard the terms greenhouse effect and global warming. Before moving on to the subject of this essay, it pays to take a step back and examine both terms to ensure that you understand what I'll be talking about. (Don't worry: this is about as technical and scientific as I'm going to get.) In short, and thus somewhat simplistically, the greenhouse effect refers to a process in which carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal is released into the atmosphere at a rate faster than it can be absorbed by living systems such as plants and inorganic processes such as absorption into seawater and chemical reactions with rocks and soils. A lesser-known but potentially more serious cause of the greenhouse effect relates to the release of trapped methane, whether from thawing of arctic permafrost (which permits increased decomposition of these huge deposits of organic matter, releasing methane) or a sudden release from clathrates composed of methane trapped in water ice that lie in large quantities on some parts of the sea floor. The greenhouse effect occurs because more of the longwave ("heat") radiation released as the Earth cools is trapped in the atmosphere by these gases and cannot escape into space, just like in a greenhouse; this is one cause—and possibly even the main one—of global warming.

It's the last clause that is the important part. No credible scientist doubts that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are rising. There have been countless measurements using a range of techniques that unequivocally demonstrate this change: carbon dioxide levels have risen from around 250 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to around 370 ppm today—an increase of roughly 50%. Even optimistic extrapolations of current trends predict a doubling of carbon dioxide levels within a century; pessimists predict an even scarier increase.

There's considerably more uncertainty and debate about whether global warming is occurring. There is an enormous body of good evidence that shows a strong warming trend over the past thousand years; in fact, I've edited a wide range of journal articles in recent years that leave me convinced our planet is warming, and possibly dramatically. But the problem in all such statements is that the most convincing measurements are direct ones, and we've only been doing these measurements for a few centuries—an insignificant proportion of the billion-plus-year history of life on Earth. The more-indirect measurements support the conclusions derived from the direct measurements, but rely on assumptions that are reasonable but not proven to the satisfaction of everyone in the scientific community. Much of this skepticism is appropriate, since as Carl Sagan observed, extreme claims require extreme proof. The problem is exacerbated by the large variations in temperatures, both locally and globally, that have occurred in recent centuries and over longer terms. These variations make it difficult to insist on the existence of a clear temperature increase caused by mankind; the overall pattern looks awfully convincing, but there's no smoking gun.

Last but not least, there's considerable doubt over the relationship between the carbon dioxide increase and global warming. There's a famous saying in the sciences that "correlation does not imply causality"—which in nonmathematical terms means only that two things may happen simultaneously by chance, not because one phenomenon causes the other. (Consider, for example, the near-100% correlation between watching television and dying before the age of 100. Nobody would argue that television itself kills us before our 200th birthday, despite the strength of the correlation.) We know that Earth's climate varies over time, with periodic ice ages recurring at intervals of tens of thousands of years; indeed, we are currently in the middle of the period that follows the most recent ice age, and some believe that any observations of global warming relate solely to the natural warming that follows an ice age. Fluctuations in climate also occur at shorter intervals; one of the most famous occurred from about 1550 to 1850 (depending on how you define the boundaries), a period of unusually cold weather referred to by historians as the "Little Ice Age". How can we distinguish between such long-term variations and the observed warming trend? We cannot—or at least not easily.

As noted in my February editorial, science progresses by making reasonable guesses called hypotheses that explain how the world works, testing these guesses, analyzing the results of those tests, and revising our model of reality accordingly. This ongoing process of refinement, sometimes accompanied by dramatic paradigm shifts, is one of the glories of science and possibly its greatest contribution to human history. But as I noted in that editorial, those who don't understand this model, or who understand it and pervert it to accomplish their own ends, subvert the power of the process by transforming that power into a weakness. This is nowhere so clear as it is in the current debate over the greenhouse effect and global warming. Both phenomena qualify as theories based on the definitions in my editorial: they have generated a great many testable hypotheses, and the results of these tests have largely supported the theories or been accommodated by relatively minor modifications of the theories. Moreover, increasingly sophisticated computer models show increasingly good simulation of the observed trends, suggesting that even though correlation does not imply causality, we seem to have discovered an underlying causality that can explain the observed changes and that is thus responsible for the correlation.

Those who would rather continue the status quo rather than facing a potentially disastrous reality, whatever the consequences of their shortsighted attitude, attack the proponents of the theories of global warming and the greenhouse effect based on a misunderstanding of how science works—or perhaps more cynically, based on a very deep understanding of how science works and how the general public misunderstands this process. Most cynically of all, some adopt the unethical attitude that it simply doesn't matter whether the proponents of these theories are right. (A brief etymological clarification: Although modern usage considers immorality to be a greater sin than unethical behavior, this actually reverses the denotation of the terms. Morality is inherently contextual, as in Cicero's exclamation Oh tempora! Oh mores!, and that context is the social environment of the time; in contrast, ethics addresses moral absolutes that are claimed to be true for all peoples and all times. I'll use that latter definition in the remainder of this essay.)

The argument has been made, most often by scientists, that science is inherently ethically neutral. Even if it is not, those who adopt this position fail to distinguish between ethics and morality, and based on this misunderstanding, state unequivocally that ethical principles are subjective, and thus irrelevant in the context of an ostensibly objective field such as science. On even cursory examination, this position is clearly indefensible; ethics applies to all human concerns, including science, and whether or not science itself is ethically neutral, scientists (being human) are not.

Those who reject the greenhouse effect and global warming theories may well prove to be correct. Having considered a large body of evidence, I don't personally believe this to be likely, but I must be true to my own knowledge of how science works and admit that at present, there remains considerable doubt as to the magnitude of the human impact on our environment. But these naysayers are standing on what is at best ethically questionable ground. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say their standpoint is entirely unethical—or immoral, if you want to use a word with more powerful emotional resonance despite my chosen definitions of the two words. Why? Because they cannot answer the following questions:

Because the potential consequences of the greenhouse effect and global warming would kill large numbers of humans, and might even be potentially fatal to our species, one must ask an ever harder question: Is it ethically defensible to run an experiment whose consequences could be so severe? Waiting until the effects of the current warming trend become unmistakable is conducting exactly such an experiment. In late 2005, Hurricane Katrina revealed, on a very small scale from the global perspective but on a very large scale from the human perspective, the consquences of willful ignorance and an unconscionable refusal to act in advance of a catastrophe. We can only hope that this lesson is not lost on those who have the power to affect our future environment and that of our children.

The argument that trying to reign in our environmental malpractice will cost us more than the benefits is demonstrably nonsense. Even if we exclude "intangible" benefits such as reducing the risk of catastrophe or improving future human health, there are clear tangible benefits. For example, the oil company BP (British Petroleum, though their new slogan for this acronym is "beyond petroleum") predicts that it will reduce its operating costs by US$650 million over a 10-year period by adopting more environmentally responsible practices that will also reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 10%. They're not alone in beginning such investigations. Moreover, I've yet to hear a good argument in favor of leaving all the lights on overnight in dozens of urban skyscrapers.

If these issues concern you, I urge you to become active in making your elected representatives aware of your concern. The Union of Concerned Scientists offers a good place to get started: their "advocacy resource page" (www.ucsusa.org) provides many good suggestions on how you can get involved in making change happen. After all, it's the ethical thing to do.

We… we… we…

by Jean-luc Doumont

Previously published in the IEEE Prof. Commun. Soc. Newsletter 47:2, 15 (March/April 2003)

Scientists and engineers alerted to the inaccuracy of passive-voice statements such as It is believed may well decide to do something about it. Recognizing that the occasional first-person verbs they encounter in their reading are more useful than distracting, the participants of my training programs thus set their mind on using “we”. Alas, many of them go overboard in the attempt, saturating their texts with first-person statements. Clearly, not all “we” are created equal. Some are usefully replaced by other constructions. Others are simply ambiguous: whom do they refer to?

The first-person taboo, like most myths, is not totally unfounded. Because the grammatical subject typically expresses the sentence's topic, a sequence of first-person sentences suggests that the authors are talking about… themselves. Such a writing style might understandably irritate readers looking for research outcomes, not autobiographies.

As argued before (“Scientists and engineers never do anything” in the February 2006 issue of the Exchange), the concern is to clarify the agent when the agent matters, not to blindly turn every passive voice into an active one for a supposed improvement in readability. Replacing The temperature was measured by We measured the temperature thus hardly helps, for the reader is unlikely to care about who carried out the measurement. Saying something about the measured temperature (active voice, but in third person) is then a better alternative.

Clarifying the agent may not require placing the authors in the subject position. Among the various accurate alternatives, I have found two that scientists and engineers are usually comfortable with. One is to use the first person in the subordinate clause rather than in the main clause, as in The algorithm we have developed uses… The other is to shun the "we" in favor of a possessive adjective, as in Our algorithm uses… In both cases, the sentence focuses on the algorithm, not the authors (in contrast to We use…), yet it involves them somehow (in contrast to The algorithm uses…). This subtle distinction is perhaps most appropriate for conclusions (Our algorithm outperforms…), where authors usually want to underline achievements without sounding arrogant.

To give the first person its highest added value, I recommend using it for the authors' role as researchers, not as writers. The rhetorical statement In this section, we describe… can thus be replaced by This section describes… Despised by some as inaccurate (documents don't do anything; people do), this construct turns out to be no more ambiguous than other useful metaphors, and it appropriately places the topic (the document or part thereof) in a subject position. Of course, some rhetorical statements are unnecessary: the sentence Finally, we would like to mention four limitations of our model can be replaced by Our model has four limitations. Let's talk science and technology, not rhetoric.

To my knowledge, the first person plural is universally understood to mean “we, the authors” unless otherwise specified. When meant differently, it becomes ambiguous, as in the following two cases:

First, the use of a plural by a single author is obviously inaccurate. Perhaps the author refers to himself or herself as "we"? This use being typical of kings and popes, I am always surprised to hear that writers think they are being less arrogant by writing “we” to mean “I”. Perhaps the author wishes to include others? These need to be specified, for example as My colleagues and I, subsequently correctly referred to as “we”. The identification of agents is crucial for PhD theses, as the single author must prove that he or she is a good researcher, not just that the work done (by whom?) is good research.

Second, there is the problem of the use of “we” to mean “you the reader and we the authors”, as in If we replace x2 by y. This may be appropriate for a tutorial, but is typically less so for documents reporting the authors' work: different instances of “we” do not mix well.

The first person holds much promise for effective writing. Still, the more “we” there are in a document, the less each of them is worth. Let us use them with discrimination.

Dr. Jean-luc Doumont teaches and provides advice on professional speaking, writing, and graphing. For some 20 years, he has helped audiences of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities structure their thoughts and construct their communication.

The "CSI effect": scientific education via television has its perils

by Geoff Hart (ghart@videotron.ca)

Not all scientific communication is deadly serious—some is purely for the sake of entertainment—but even the "just for fun" type can sometimes have significant real-world consequences. As any afficionado of television crime shows can attest, detectives have always relied on scientific principles to accomplish their work. These principles may be as simple and low-tech as the careful observation, hypothesis-formation, and rigorous application of logic that characterize Sherlock Holmes and his spiritual kin, or as "last century" as classical fingerprinting. The trust in science that has arisen over the past century or so has led to the adoption of scientific detection in literature and on the small screen, and the technology level is increasing steadily.

Lately, medical forensics has become the hot topic in television crime shows. The archetype of such shows may have been Quincy (www.imdb.com/title/tt0074042/), a mid-1970s show in which Jack Klugman played a medical examiner who investigated crimes, but today's hot show is CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The original show (www.imdb.com/title/tt0247082/) became so popular that it spun off two others shows, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York, not to mention imitators such as Bones (www.imdb.com/title/tt0460627/). Harmless entertainment? Perhaps not.

A recent CBC news story (www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/02/27/csi-effect-halifax.html) reveals that increasing public awareness of forensics as a result of these shows has forced police investigators to rely increasingly on scientific evidence rather than on witness testimony. Given the unreliability of human memory—what some have called the Rashomon effect, after Kurosawa's famous film that explored the consequences of viewing the same crime from several different viewpoints (www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/)—this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does have certain unfortunate consequences. For one thing, as any medically literate viewer who watches House, MD (www.imdb.com/title/tt0412142/) can tell you, witty dialogue and infuriating characters make for entertaining viewing, but a poor technical education in a complex subject.

The CBC story quotes Staff Sgt. Tony McCulloch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) forensics unit as noting that the TV shows have raised unrealistic expectations about the nature of the evidence needed to build a case. This extends to the courtroom, where jurors now demand more formal scientific evidence and less human subjectivity. The problem, of course, is that even when evidence such as DNA fingerprinting is nominally available to investigators, it's too expensive or time-consuming to use in routine cases—and it's not always obvious which cases are routine and which will become far more significant with the passage of time. As a result, the view of reality has diverged between a television-educated audience that wants hard scientific data and the overworked police investigator, who may have neither time nor resources to perform every potentially relevant test. Because jury trials remain an important part of our legal system, investigators must work harder to muster a convincing case against a suspect. Furthermore, they must learn a lesson we technical communicators know all too well: that a message must be tailored to the expectations of the audience. Fail to present the expected evidence, even if that evidence is unobtainable and unnecessary in a practical sense, and even Sherlock Holmes might have difficulty persuading a modern jury. I'm sure that unethical defense lawyers will soon be using this situation (misrepresentation of science) to their advantage if they aren't already doing so.

Other misconceptions can be generated by the small and big screens. For example, screenwriters rarely take the time to learn about the nature of a coma, and perpetrate gross errors that cause a different set of problems. A recent paper by Eelco Wijdicks of the Mayo Clinic in the journal Neurology reports the results of a study of 30 movies depicting characters in prolonged comas. As summarized in a CBC news story (www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/05/08/coma-movies060508.html), people generally receive unrealistic expectations about the likelihood of recovery from a coma. Moreover, these movies often depict a "Sleeping Beauty" effect in which recovery from a coma is sudden and complete. In reality, there can be severe physical consequences; for example, muscles require ongoing use to retain their tone, and spending weeks or months in a coma leads to serious muscle deterioration that may require years of physiotherapy to correct. That's quite apart from any personality or cognitive changes that would result from the injuries that caused the coma in the first place. Last but not least, the short duration of a TV show or movie makes it very difficult to portray the wrenching consequences for the family and friends of the comatose patient.

Of course, the opposite of the House effect can also occur. Screenwriters face a new dilemma that thoughtful scientists have always been keenly aware of: that television may be no more ethically neutral than science. A while ago, I read about a young thief who watched every episode of CSI and used what he learned to break into a long series of homes in his community. (Unfortunately, I couldn't track down the actual news story while I was writing this article, so exercise appropriate skepticism about the details.) Police were having a devil of a time catching this thief because he'd learned his trade so well from watching the pros commit crimes on TV. Of course, he apparently neglected the more obvious lesson, namely that all TV villains eventually come to justice, and investigators did finally catch the thief. But this case does raise the interesting question of just how much realism screenwriters should provide: enough to make a show feel real (verisimilitude), but perhaps not so much that TV viewers can "try this at home, kids".

What can we do, as scientific communicators. Provide appropriate and ongoing feedback to the worst offenders. This past week, I wrote to the producers of House M.D. to gently suggest that they need to hire a medical expert to edit out the more egregious medical violations—or possibly listen to the existing consultant if one exists. I don't watch CSI, so I can't comment on the quality of their forensics. But if you do watch the show and have issues with their science, take the time to send in your comments. Producers have no incentive to fix the problems with their science if they have the impression that nobody cares, and some are very eager to obtain constructive feedback from their audience. Put together enough letters of comment and the better ones may decide to clean up their act. It's a small investment of your time, but a laudable one.

Parting thoughts

“The lasting value of astronomy is that it offers us perspective, including the realization that we’re not at the center of the solar system, the galaxy, or the universe. In the last 25 years, we’ve learned that a sun with planets is not even unusual.”—Jeff Juhn, University of Hawaii

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“I may not know what truth is, but I know what I like.”—Norman Spinrad, Songs from the stars

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“For all us Godless Secular Humanists, these should be the good times. The attack on science has diverted the attendion of those for whom the GSH... um... community has always been a convenient target, leaving us free to spread our humanistic pabulum to the unwary of the world. But there’s a problem: the attack on science has always been our game and in this case the enemy of our enemy is most definitely not our friend.”—Robert Wilson, Reason in the Sun

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[On the difference between agricultural husbandry and scientific agriculture:] “The husband, unlike the ‘manager’ or the would-be objective scientist, belongs inherently to the complexity and the mystery that is to be husbanded, and so the husbanding mind is both careful and humble. Husbandry originates precautionary sayings like ‘Don’t put all your eggs into one basket’ and ‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.’ It does not boast of technological feats that will ‘feed the world’.”—Wendell Berry

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“Science is about asking questions. The trouble with science as it’s too often seen, whether it’s on a multiple-choice test or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is that it’s presented as trivial facts with certain answers. But the excitement of science is at the frontiers, where often there’s real uncertainty… Science is as much about sharpening the questions as giving the answers, and we don’t succeed in capturing that excitement and that liveliness in too much of the way we teach science. It’s the people who are happily questioning what they’re told without too much respect, and those who sort of don’t know what they’re supposed to be thinking, who are important. You won’t necessarily get that in its fullest flowering, even in a flourishing democracy, and it’s extremely hard to get it if you don’t have a system in which general freedom of expression is encouraged.”—Lord Robert May, President of the Royal Society

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“Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four.”—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799)

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“There’s nothing wrong with science, of course, except that it can’t answer any of the important questions. If we think of life as an automobile, science can tell us how to build it and how to fix it, but science can’t tell us who did build it, who’s driving it, or where it’s headed.”—Robert Wilson, Reason in the Sun

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“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”—Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

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