"It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning."
"Proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear."
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Source: Claude Bernard, Henry Copley Greene (1957). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.55, Courier Corporation
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"The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds."
"When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted."
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"Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results,only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim."