“Our business requires perfection and our vehicle was not perfect today.”

NASA launch director Mike Leinbach reflects on the gas leak that prevented the space shuttle Discovery launching on Wednesday. It will now not take off until Sunday 15 March (Space.com).

“What I don’t want NASA to do is just limp along.”

Barack Obama says NASA is an agency afflicted by “a sense of drift” and that it needs “a new mission that is appropriate for the 21st century” (Orlando Sentinel).

“I cannot begin to comprehend why a person would take this course.”

Steven Shafer, editor-in-chief of Anesthesia and Analgesia, a journal which is retracting [pdf] articles penned by a leading anesthesiology researcher, Scott Reuben. Reuben is accused of faking data in at least 21 published studies, published over 13 years. (Anesthesiology News; see also BMJ (subscription required); New York Times; Boston Globe; Wall Street Journal; Scientific American).