Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort through the Noise around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies

10Fitting the pieces together: know how to seek information to gain a balanced perspective

	The most important product of knowledge is ignorance.
	—David Gross, 2004 Nobel Laureate in Physics, at the annual University of California, San Diego Physics Department Memorial Lecture, April 21, 2005

Children are wide-eyed when they see a Russian Matryoshka doll for the first time. Inside the wooden doll is another, slightly smaller doll. Inside the smaller doll is yet another doll, and inside that one is another.... An impressive line of successively smaller dolls results when the dolls are de-nested. Even in an age of electronic gizmos and gadgets, this low-tech toy has the power to capture the imagination. There is something ...