Eavesdroppings

Eavesdroppings Science Quotations of the Month Avi Spivak We’re not really attracted to each other, we’re attracted to each other’s microbes. —Yale University microbiologist Jo Handelsman, quoted in an August 2010 The Scientist article about how gut flora affects the ability of male fruit flies to attract a mate We are realizing that conservation is not about managing wildlife as much as it is about managing ourselvesR


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We’re not really attracted to each other, we’re attracted to each other’s microbes.

Yale University microbiologist Jo Handelsman, quoted in an August 2010 The Scientist article about how gut flora affects the ability of male fruit flies to attract a mate

We are realizing that conservation is not about managing wildlife as much as it is about managing ourselves—our appetites, expectations, fears, our fundamental avariciousness. If we do not succeed at that, other forces assuredly will.

Caroline Fraser, from Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution

Science has nothing to do with common sense. Common sense is a set of prejudices. That’s what we’re fighting against.

Simon Singh, science journalist and coauthor of Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine, quoted in the September 2010 issue of Wired after winning a libel suit initiated by the British Chiropractic Association

After a certain high level of technical skill ...

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