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Science creates a power through its knowledge, a power to do things. It does not give instructions as to how to use it for good rather than evil. Scientists’ statements are approximate, never absolutely certain. We must leave room for doubt, or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question, and a question requires doubt. Before you begin an experiment, you must not know the answer. If you already know the answer, there is no need to gather any evidence; and to judge the evidence, you must take all of it, not just the parts you like. That’s a responsibility that scientists feel towards each other, a kind of morality.

Science has had long experience with ignorance, doubt, in uncertainty. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority, a very deep and powerful struggle. Permit us to question, to doubt, to not be sure: that’s all we ask. We must not forget the importance of this struggle, or we may lose what we have gained. Here lies a responsibility to society, to pass on what we have learned, and to leave future scientists a free hand. We make a grave error if we say we have the answers now, suppressing all discussion in criticism, and thus doom mankind to be chained to authority, to the limits of our present understanding, as has done so often before!By Richard Feynman, professor of Theological Physics at Caltech and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965