Nullius in Verba – take no one’s word for it
A blog called Nullius in Verba could quite easily be about how brilliant and important science is. I am, amongst all the other hundred or so things I mentioned earlier (daughter, sister, student, friend, ex, dog-lover, prickly, undecided, uncertain…), a scientist. I became a scientist that day in the lecture hall, in the first term of my first year of university, the first time I heard the words nullius in verba. Thank you Horace. I love science - it’s a sharp, keen love, which I often feel stirring inside me and trying to come out at inconvenient moments. So, for lack of a more sophisticated expression, I have a horse in that race. Whichever career the older, perhaps slightly more certain version of myself chooses - and, in all honesty, I don’t think it will be in a laboratory - one of the things that I am, for better or worse, will always be a scientist. But this isn’t, after all, a blog about the brilliance and importance of science. It’s a blog about uncertainty. My uncertainty. And when I say “Nullius in verba,” I don’t mean quite the same thing as the scientist does.