Members in the Media

"It seems by the time they left the class, they were looking at the world with a more critical and more scientific eye."
— Jim Kakalios, University of Minnesota, on using comic books to teach physics, AP, May 9 2002

"Anywhere you find waves you find solitons."
— Randall Hulet, Rice University, on creating solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates, Dallas Morning News, May 20, 2002

"It would be quite foolish to rest the future of civilization (at least of countless lives) on the feeble assurance of small odds. It is a matter not of whether a serious collision will happen, but of when."
— Marcelo Gleiser, Dartmouth College, on the possibility of Earth being struck by a large asteroid, LA Times, May 27, 2002

"We expect it will be a long struggle to perfect the instrument. Hundreds of things need to be just right to get the sensitivity we need."
— Fred Raab, LIGO Hanford Observatory, on the difficulties of detecting gravitational waves, Seattle Post- Intelligencer, May 28, 2002

"The ability to manipulate molecules with tailored laser pulses opens up the ability to understand and possibly eventually alter the pathways of chemical or biological processes."
— Herschel Rabitz, Princeton University, on using lasers to control photosynthesis, UPI, May 29, 2002

"Although they have a weird name, Wimpzillas are among the most reasonable of current speculative ideas in the field."
— Angela Olinto, University of Chicago, on a possible dark matter candidate, New Scientist, June 3, 2002

And finally, some quotes having to do with alleged misconduct by scientists at Bell Labs:

"We found the results to be extremely intriguing and potentially revolutionary. We had a significant team focusing on this work and trying to reproduce the published results. So far, we have not been able to reproduce the results."
— Thomas N. Theis, IBM Watson Research Center, NY Times, May 23, 2002

"There were funny things about the data that just shouldn't have occurred."
— Lydia Sohn, Princeton University, Financial Times, May 23, 2002

"It looks very unusual, and I felt it was my ethical responsibility to inform the people involved."
— Paul McEuen, Cornell University, AP, May 23, 2002

"I am not convinced it will all turn out to be fraudulent, and in fact I'd be surprised if the ultimate story is as simple as that."
— David Goldhaber-Gordon, Stanford University, AP, May 22, 2002

"We will report back to Lucent on our findings whether we believe there has been scientific misconduct or not."
— Malcolm Beasley, Stanford University, NY Times, May 21, 2002