A scientific wager is a wager whose outcome is settled by scientific method. They typically consist of an offer to pay a certain sum of money on the scientific proof or disproof of some currently uncertain statement. Some wagers have specific date restrictions for collection, but many are open. Wagers occasionally exert a powerful galvanizing effect on society and the scientific community.
Notable scientists who have made scientific wagers include Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman. Stanford Linear Accelerator has an open book containing about 35 bets in particle physics dating back to 1980; many are still unresolved.
Read more about Scientific Wager: Notable Scientific Wagers
Famous quotes containing the words scientific and/or wager:
“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I’ll wager that it was impossible after we got mixed together to tell an anti from a suffragist by her clothes. There might have been a difference, though, in the expression of the faces and the shape of the heads.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)