“Vigorous criticism is more constructive in science than in some other areas of human endeavor because in science there are adequate standards of validity that can be agreed upon by competent practitioners the world over. The objective of such criticism is not to suppress but rather to encourage the advance of new ideas: those that survive a firm skeptical scrutiny have a fighting chance of being right, or at least useful.”

—  Carl Sagan , book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 7, “Venus and Dr. Velikovsky” (p. 98)

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American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed… 1934–1996

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