Lewis M. Branscomb

North Carolina · born or raised1926–2023

physicist and science policy advisor

Born in Asheville

physicist, university teacher

Quotations with a citation

God loves the noise as much as the signal.

While it is becoming increasingly obvious that the fundamental architecture of a system has a profound Influence on the quality of its human factors, the vast majority of human factors studies concern the surface of hardware (keyboards, screens) or the very surface of the software (command names, menu formats).

I believe that there are very few scientists who deliberately falsify their work, cheat on their colleagues, or steal from their students. On the other hand, I am afraid that a great many scientists deceive themselves from time to time in their treatment of data, gloss over problems involving systematic errors, or understate the contributions of others. These are the 'honest mistakes' of science. The scientific equivalent of the 'little white lie' of social discourse. The scientific community has no way to protect itself from sloppy or deceptive literature except to learn whose work is suspect as unreliable.

Teachers of science in schools and colleges must be masters of the tools for ensuring integrity in science and must instill them in their students.

We must understand that the fact of error, demonstrated in subsequent work, does not suggest that ethical lapses are responsible. It is more likely that the source of error is, as the advertisement says, a reflection of the fact that "its dangerous to trifle with Mother Nature".

Technology policy - whether we should have one and what form such a policy should take - was a core issue of the 1992 presidential campaign, and in February 1993 the Clinton administration confirmed that fostering new technologies will be a critical part of its agenda for redirecting the American economy.

While political and cultural factors are important as explanations for differences in national technology policy and industrial practices, emergent trends in science, engineering and management are leading to new paradigms for high-technology innovation in both Japan and the United States.

I distinguish two kinds of "applied" research: problem-solving research — government or commercially initiated, centrally managed and institutionally coupled to a plan for application of the results, useful science — investigator-initiated, competitively evaluated and widely communicated. Then we have basic science — useful also, also investigator-initiated, competitively evaluated and widely communicated.

An exploration of the challenges Korea faces in transforming its economy from a government-directed, low-cost producer to an innovative world economic power based on its own scientific and technological development.

Shortly after taking office in 1993, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore called for a shift in American technology policy toward an expansion of public investments in partnerships with private industry.

Scientists are used to debating with one another about the finer points of new research. But increasingly, they find themselves battling their televisions and computer screens, which transmit ever-more-heated rhetoric from politicians, pundits, and other public figures who misinterpret, misrepresent, and malign scientific results.

Science has been the absolute bedrock of technological and economic progress in the United States.

In the libraries

Open Library Confessions of a technophile · 1994 View library record ↗ Open Library Converging infrastructures · 1996 View library record ↗ Open Library Empowering Technology · 1993 View library record ↗ Open Library Industrializing knowledge · 1999 View library record ↗ Open Library Investing in innovation · 1997 View library record ↗ Open Library Korea at the turning point · 1996 View library record ↗

Read Lewis M. Branscomb

Industrializing knowledge 1999 Find a copy Investing in innovation 1997 Find a copy Converging infrastructures 1996 Find a copy Confessions of a technophile 1994 Find a copy Empowering Technology 1993 Find a copy Korea at the turning point 1996 Find a copy

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

The progress of science still depends on "a few people of vision".