Learn About The Scientific Method

In this episode of the I Can't Sleep Podcast, fall asleep learning about the scientific method. Just imagine your teacher or professor at the front of the class reading this stuff to you. Yeah, you're not going to last the whole class period because you'll be out. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,

Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster.

Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled,

Scientific Method.

The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century.

The scientific method involves careful observation coupled with rigorous skepticism,

Because cognitive assumptions can distort the interpretation of the observation.

Scientific inquiry includes creating a hypothesis through inductive reasoning,

Testing it through experiments and statistical analysis,

And adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the results.

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another,

The underlying process is frequently the same.

The process in the scientific method involves making conjectures,

Hypothetical explanations,

Deriving predictions from the hypotheses as logical consequences,

And then carrying out experiments or empirical observations based on those predictions.

A hypothesis is a conjecture based on knowledge obtained while seeking answers to the question.

A hypothesis might be very specific,

Or it might be broad.

Scientists then test hypotheses by conducting experiments or studies.

A scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable,

Implying that it is possible to identify a possible outcome of an experiment or observation that conflicts with the predictions deduced from the hypothesis.

Otherwise the hypothesis cannot be meaningfully tested.

Though the scientific method is often presented as a fixed sequence of steps,

It represents rather a set of general principles.

Not all steps take place in every scientific inquiry,

Nor to the same degree,

And they are not always in the same order.

The history of the scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry as distinct from the history of science itself.

The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward.

Scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science,

And eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of one or another approach to establishing scientific knowledge.

Different early expressions of empiricism and the scientific method can be found throughout history,

For instance with the ancient Stoics Epicurus,

Alhazen,

Avicenna,

Albiruni,

Roger Bacon and William of Ockham.

During the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries,

The not-yet-named method first gained significant traction.

Some of the most important developments were the furthering of empiricism by Francis Bacon and Robert Hooke,

The rationalist approach described by René Descartes,

And inductivism brought to particular prominence by and around Isaac Newton.

From the 16th century onwards,

Experiments were advocated by Francis Bacon and performed by John Battista della Porta,

Johannes Kepler,

And Galileo Galilei.

There was particular development aided by theoretical works by a skeptic Francisco Sánchez,

By idealists as well as empiricists John Locke,

George Berkeley,

And David Hume.

The early version of the canonical sequence of elements was first formulated in the 19th century.

A sea voyage from America to Europe afforded C.

S.

Peirce the distance to clarify his ideas,

Gradually resulting in the hypothetico-deductive model.

Formulated in the 20th century,

The model has undergone significant revision since first proposed.

The term scientific method emerged in the 19th century as the result of significant institutional development of science,

And terminologies establishing clear boundaries between science and non-science,

Such as scientist and pseudoscience,

Appearing.

Throughout the 1830s and 1850s,

When Baconianism was popular,

Naturalists like William Hewell,

John Herschel,

And John Stuart Mill engaged in debates over induction and facts,

And were focused on how to generate knowledge.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

A debate over realism versus anti-realism was conducted,

As powerful scientific theories extended beyond the realm of the observable.

The term scientific method came into popular use in the 20th century,

Dewey's 1910 book How We Think inspired popular guidelines,

Appearing in dictionaries and science textbooks,

Although there was little consensus over its meaning.

Although there was growth through the middle of the 20th century,

By the 1960s and 1970s,

Numerous influential philosophers of science,

Such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend,

Had questioned the universality of the scientific method,

And in doing so largely replaced the notion of science as a homogenous and universal method,

With that of it being a heterogeneous and local practice.

In particular,

Paul Feyerabend,

In the 1975 first edition of his book Against Method,

Argued against there being any universal rules of science.

Karl Popper,

Gauch 2003,

And Tao,

2010,

Disagree with Feyerabend's claim.

Their stances include physicist Lee Smolin's 2013 essay There Is No Scientific Method,

In which he espouses two ethical principles,

And historian of science Daniel Thurs' chapter in the 2015 book Newton's Apple and Other Myths About Science,

Which concluded that the scientific method is a myth,

Or at best,

An idealization.

As myths are beliefs,

They are subjected to the narrative fallacy as Taleb points out.

Philosophers Robert Nola and Howard Sankey,

In their 2007 book Theories of Scientific Method,

Said that debates over the scientific method continue,

And argued that Feyerabend,

Despite the title of Against Method,

Accepted certain rules of method,

And attempted to justify those rules with a metamethodology.

Statton,

2017,

Argues it is a mistake to try following rules in the absence of an algorithmic scientific method.

In that case,

Science is best understood through examples.

But algorithmic methods,

Such as disproof of existing theory by experiment,

Have been used since Allison,

Book of Optics,

And Galileo,

The New Sciences,

And the Essayer,

Still stand as scientific method.

There are different ways of outlining the basic method used for scientific inquiry,

And they are better considered as general principles than a fixed sequence of steps.

The scientific community and philosophers of science generally agree on the following classification of method components.

These methodological elements and organization of procedures tend to be more characteristic of experimental sciences than social sciences.

Nonetheless,

The cycle of formulating hypotheses,

Testing and analyzing the results,

And formulating new hypotheses will resemble the cycle described below.

The scientific method is an iterative,

Cyclical process through which information is continually revised.

It is generally recognized to develop advances in knowledge through the following elements and varying combinations or contributions.

Characterizations,

Observations,

Definitions,

And measurements of the subject of inquiry Hypotheses,

Theoretical,

Hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements of the subject Predictions,

Inductive and deductive reasoning from the hypothesis or theory Experiments,

Tests of all of the above Each element of the scientific method is subject to peer review for possible mistakes.

These activities do not describe all the scientists do,

But apply mostly to experimental sciences,

E.

G.

Physics,

Chemistry,

Biology,

And psychology.

The elements above are often taught in the educational system as the scientific method.

The scientific method is not a single recipe.

It requires intelligence,

Imagination,

And creativity.

In this sense,

It is not a mindless set of standards and procedures to follow,

But is rather an ongoing cycle,

Constantly developing more useful,

Accurate,

And comprehensive models and methods.

For example,

When Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity,

He did not in any way refute or discount Newton's Principia.

On the contrary,

If the astronomically massive,

The featherlight,

And the extremely fast are removed from Einstein's theories,

All phenomena Newton could not have observed,

Newton's equations are what remain.

Einstein's theories are expansions and refinements of Newton's theories,

And thus increase confidence in Newton's work.

An iterative,

Pragmatic scheme of the four points above is sometimes offered as a guideline for proceeding.

1.

Define a question.

2.

Gather information and resources,

Observe.

3.

Form an explanatory hypothesis.

4.

Test the hypothesis by performing an experiment and collecting data in a reproducible manner.

5.

Analyze the data.

6.

Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for a new hypothesis.

7.

Publish results.

8.

Retest,

Frequently done by other scientists.

The iterative cycle inherent in this step-by-step method goes from point 3 to 6 and back to 3 again.

While this schema outlines a typical hypothesis testing method,

Many philosophers,

Historians,

And sociologists of science,

Including Paul Feyerbend,

Claim that such descriptions of scientific method have little relation to the ways that science is actually practiced.

The basic elements of the scientific method are illustrated by the following example,

Which occurred from 1944 to 1953 from the discovery of the structure of DNA.

In 1950,

It was known that genetic inheritance had a mathematical description,

Starting with the studies of Gregor Mendel,

And that DNA contained genetic information,

Oswald Avery's transforming principle.

But the mechanism of storing genetic information,

I.

E.

Genes,

In DNA,

Was unclear.

Researchers in Bragg's laboratory at Cambridge University made X-ray diffraction pictures of various molecules,

Starting with crystals of salt,

And proceeded to more complicated substances.

Using clues painstakingly assembled over decades,

Beginning with its chemical composition,

It was determined that it should be possible to characterize the physical structure of DNA,

And the X-ray images would be the vehicle.

The scientific method depends upon increasingly sophisticated characterizations of the subjects of investigation.

The subjects can also be called unsolved problems,

Or the unknowns.

For example,

Benjamin Franklin conjectured,

Correctly,

That St.

Elmo's fire was electrical in nature,

But it has taken a long series of experiments and theoretical changes to establish this.

While seeking the pertinent properties of the subjects,

Careful thought may also entail some definitions and observations.

These observations often demand careful measurements,

And or accounting can take the form of expansive empirical research.

A scientific question can refer to the explanation of a specific observation,

I.

E.

Why is the sky blue,

But can also be open-ended,

I.

E.

,

How can I design a drug to cure this particular disease?

This stage frequently involves finding and evaluating evidence from previous experiments,

Personal scientific observations or assertions,

As well as the work of other scientists.

If the answer is already known,

A different question that builds on the evidence can be posed.

When applying the scientific method to research,

Determining a good question can be very difficult,

And it will affect the outcome of the investigation.

The systematic,

Careful collection of measurements or counts of relevant quantities is often the critical difference between pseudosciences,

Such as alchemy,

And science,

Such as chemistry or biology.

Scientific measurements are usually tabulated,

Graphed,

Or mapped,

And statistical manipulations,

Such as correlation and regression,

Performed on them.

The measurements might be made in a controlled setting,

Such as a laboratory,

Or made on more or less inaccessible or unmanipulatable objects,

Such as stars or human populations.

The measurements often require specialized scientific instruments,

Such as thermometers,

Spectroscopes,

Particle accelerators,

Or voltmeters,

And the progress of a scientific field is usually intimately tied to their invention and improvement.

Measurements in scientific work are also usually accompanied by estimates of their uncertainty.

The uncertainty is often estimated by making repeated measurements of the desired quantity.

Uncertainties may also be calculated by consideration of the uncertainties of the individual underlying quantities used.

Counts of things,

Such as the number of people in a nation at a particular time,

May also have an uncertainty due to data collection limitations.

Or counts may represent a sample of desired quantities with an uncertainty that depends upon the sampling method used and the number of samples taken.

The scientific definition of a term sometimes differs substantially from its natural language usage.

For example,

Mass and weight overlap in meaning and common discourse,

But have distinct meanings and mechanics.

Scientific quantities are often characterized by their units of measure,

Which can later be described in terms of conventional physical units when communicating the work.

New theories are sometimes developed after realizing certain terms have not previously been sufficiently clearly defined.

For example,

Albert Einstein's first paper on relativity begins by defining simultaneity and the means for determining length.

These ideas were skipped over by Isaac Newton with I do not define time,

Space,

Place,

And motion as being well known to all.

Einstein's paper then demonstrates that they were approximations.

Francis Crick cautions us that when characterizing a subject,

However,

It can be premature to define something when it remains ill understood.

In Crick's study of consciousness,

He actually found it easier to study awareness in the visual system rather than to study free will,

For example.

His cautionary example was the gene.

The gene was much more poorly understood before Watson and Crick's pioneering discovery of the structure of DNA.

It would have been counterproductive to spend much time on the definition of the gene before then.

A hypothesis is a suggested explanation of a phenomenon,

Or alternately a reasoned proposal suggesting a possible correlation between or among a set of phenomena.

Normally,

Hypotheses have the form of a mathematical model.

Sometimes,

But not always,

They can also be formulated as existential statements,

Stating that some particular instance of the phenomenon being studied has some characteristic and causal explanations,

Which have the general form of universal statements,

Stating that every instance of the phenomenon has a particular characteristic.

Scientists are free to use whatever resources they have,

Their own creativity,

Ideas from other fields,

Inductive reasoning,

To imagine possible explanations for a phenomenon under study.

Albert Einstein once observed that there is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles.

Charles Sanders Peirce,

Borrowing a page from Aristotle,

Described the incipient stages of inquiry instigated by the irritation of doubt to venture a plausible guess as abductive reasoning.

The history of science is filled with stories of scientists claiming a flash of inspiration or a hunch,

Which then motivated them to look for evidence to support or refute their idea.

Michael Polanyi made such creativity the centerpiece of his discussion of methodology.

William Glenn observes that the success of research does not necessarily take place,

Subsume or reduce a predecessor idea,

But perhaps more in its ability to stimulate the research that will illuminate bald suppositions and areas of vagueness.

In general,

Scientists tend to look for the theories of the most desirable amongst a group of equally explanatory hypotheses.

To minimize the confirmation bias that results from entertaining a single hypothesis,

Strong inference emphasizes the need for entertaining multiple alternative hypotheses.

Any useful hypothesis will enable predictions by reasoning,

Including deductive reasoning.

It might predict the outcome or the observation of a phenomenon in nature.

The prediction can also be statistical and deal only with probabilities.

It is essential that the outcome of testing such a prediction be currently unknown.

Only in this case does a successful outcome increase the probability that the hypothesis is true.

If the outcome is already known,

It is called a consequence and can be considered while formulating the hypothesis.

If the predictions are not accessible by observation or experience,

The hypothesis is not yet testable and so will remain to that extent unscientific in a strict sense.

A new technology or theory might make the necessary experiments feasible.

For example,

While a hypothesis on the existence of other intelligent species with scientifically based speculation,

No known experiment can test this hypothesis.

Therefore,

Science itself can have little to say about the possibility.

In the future,

A new technique may allow for an experimental test and the speculation would then become part of accepted science.

For example,

Einstein's theory of general relativity such as that light bends in a gravitational field and that the amount of bending depends in a precise way on the strength of that gravitational field.

Arthur Eddington's observations made during the 1919 solar eclipse supported general relativity rather than Newtonian gravitation.

Once predictions are made,

They can be sought by experiments.

If the test results confirm the predictions,

The hypotheses which entailed them are called into question to become less tenable.

Sometimes the experiments are conducted incorrectly or are not very well designed when compared to a crucial experiment.

If the experimental results confirm the predictions,

Then the hypotheses are considered more likely to be correct but might still be wrong The experimental control is a technique for dealing with observational error.

This technique uses the contrast between multiple samples or observations or populations under differing conditions to see what varies or what remains the same.

We vary the conditions for the acts of measurement to help isolate what has changed.

Mill's canons can then help us figure out what the factor is.

Factor analysis is one technique for discovering the important factor in an effect.

Depending on the predictions,

The experiments can have different shapes.

It could be a classical experiment in a laboratory setting,

A double-blind study,

Or an archaeological excavation.

Even taking a plane from New York to Paris is an experiment that tests the aerodynamical hypotheses for detecting the plane.

These institutions thereby reduce the research function to a cost-benefit which is expressed as money and the time and attention of the researchers to be expended in exchange for a report to their constituents.

Current large instruments such as CERN's Large Hadron Collider LHC or LIGO or the National Ignition Facility NIF or the International Space Station ISS or the James Webb Space Telescope JWST entail expected costs of billions of dollars and timeframes extending over decades.

These kinds of institutions affect public policy on a national or even international basis and the researchers would require shared access to such machines and their adjunct infrastructure.

Scientists assume an attitude of openness and accountability on the part of those experimenting.

Detailed record-keeping is essential to aid in recording and reporting on the experimental results and supports the effectiveness of integrity of the procedure.

They will also assist in reproducing experimental results likely by others.

Traces of this approach can be seen in the work of Hipparchus when determining a value while controlled experiments can be seen in the works of Al-Battani and Alhazen.

The scientific method is iterative.

At any stage,

It is possible to refine its accuracy and precision so that some consideration will lead to scientists to repeat an earlier part of the process.

Failure of a hypothesis to produce interesting results may lead a scientist to reconsider the experimental method,

The hypothesis,

Or the definition of the subject.

This manner of iteration can span decades and sometimes centuries.

Published papers can be built upon.

For example,

By 1027 Alhazen,

Based on his measurements of the refraction of light,

Was able to deduce that outer space was less dense than air.

That is,

The body of the heavens is rarer than the body of the air.

In 1079,

Ibn Mu'adh's treatise on twilight was able to infer that Earth's atmosphere was 50 miles thick based on atmospheric refraction of the sun's rays.

This is why the scientific method is often represented as circular.

New information leads to new characterizations and the cycle of science continues.

Measurements collected can be archived,

Passed onwards and used by others.

It took thousands of years of measurements from Chaldean,

Indian,

Persian,

Greek,

Arabic and European astronomers to fully record the motion of planet Earth.

Newton was able to include those measurements into the consequences of his laws of motion.

But the perihelion of the planet Mercury's orbit exhibits a procession that cannot be fully explained by Newton's laws of motion.

As Le Verrier pointed out in 1859,

The observed difference for Mercury's procession between Newtonian theory and observation was one of the things that occurred to Albert Einstein as a possible early test to his theory of general relativity.

His relativistic calculations matched observation much more closely than did Newtonian theory.

The difference is approximately 43 arcseconds per century.

Other scientists may start their own research and enter the process at any stage.

They might adopt the characterization and formulate their own hypothesis or they might adopt the hypothesis and deduce their own predictions.

Often the experiment is not done by the person who made the prediction and the characterization is based on experiments done by someone else.

Published results of experiments can also serve as a hypothesis predicting their own reproducibility.

Science is a social enterprise and scientific work tends to be accepted by the scientific community when it has been confirmed.

Crucially,

Experimental and theoretical results must be reproduced by others within the scientific community.

Researchers have given their lives for this vision.

Georg Wilhelm Richtman was killed by ball lightning 1753 when attempting to replicate the 1752 kite flying experiment of Benjamin Franklin.

If an experiment cannot be repeated to produce the same results,

This implies that the original results might have been an error.

As a result,

It is common for a single experiment to be performed multiple times especially when there are uncontrolled variables or other indications of experimental error.

For significant or surprising results,

Other scientists may also attempt to replicate the results for themselves especially if those results would be important to their own work.

Replication has become a contentious issue in social and biomedical science where treatments are administered to groups of individuals.

An experimental group gets the treatment such as a drug and the control group gets a placebo.

John Ioannidis in 2005 pointed out that the method being used has led to many findings that cannot be replicated.

The process of peer review involves the evaluation of the experiment by experts who typically give their opinions anonymously.

Some journalists request that the experimenter provide lists of possible experiments to peer reviewers especially if the field is highly specialized.

Peer review does not certify the correctness of the results only that in the opinion of the reviewer the experiments themselves were sound based on the descriptions supplied by the experimenter.

If the work passes peer review which occasionally may require new experiments requested by the reviewers it will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

A specific journal that publishes the results indicates the perceived quality of the work.

Scientists typically are careful in recording their data a requirement promoted by Ludwig Fleck and others.

Though not typically required they might be requested to supply this data to other scientists who wish to replicate their original results or parts of their original results extending to the sharing of any experimental samples that may be difficult to obtain.

To protect against bad science and fraudulent data government research granting agencies such as the National Science Foundation and science journals including Nature and Science have a policy that researchers must archive their data and methods so that other researchers can test the data and methods and build on the research that has gone before.

Scientific data archiving can be done at several national archives in the U.

S.

Or the World Data Center.

Scientific methodology often directs the hypotheses be tested in controlled conditions wherever possible.

This is frequently possible in certain areas such as in the biological sciences and more difficult in other areas such as in astronomy.

The practice of experimental control and reproducibility can have the effect of diminishing the potentially harmful effects of circumstances and to a degree personal bias.

For example pre-existing beliefs can alter the interpretation of results as in confirmation bias.

This is a heuristic that leads a person with a particular belief to see things as reinforcing their belief even if another observer might disagree.

In other words people tend to observe what they expect to observe.

Another important human bias that plays a role is a preference for new surprising statements which can result in a search for evidence that the new is true.

Poorly attested beliefs can be believed and acted upon via a less rigorous heuristic.

Goldhaber and Nieto published in 2010 the observation that if theoretical structures with many closely neighboring subjects are described by connecting theoretical concepts then the theoretical structure acquires a robustness which makes it increasingly hard though certainly never impossible to overturn.

When a narrative is constructed its elements become easier to believe.

Flack 1979 page 27 notes Words and ideas are originally phonetic and mental equivalences of the experiences coinciding with them.

Such proto-ideas are at first always too broad and insufficiently specialized.

Once a structurally complete and closed system of opinions consisting of many details and relations has been formed it offers enduring resistance to anything that contradicts it.

Sometimes these relations have their elements assumed a priori or contain some other logical flaw in the process that ultimately produced them.

Donald M.

Mackey has analyzed these elements in terms of limits to the accuracy of measurement and has related them to instrumental elements in a category of measurement.

Scientific inquiry generally aims to obtain knowledge in the form of testable explanations that scientists can use to predict the results of future experiments.

This allows scientists to obtain a better understanding of the topic under study and later to use that understanding to intervene in its causal mechanisms such as to cure disease.

The better an explanation is at making predictions the more useful it frequently can be and the more likely it will continue to explain a body of evidence better than its alternatives.

The most successful explanations those that explain and make predictions in a wide range of circumstances are often called scientific theories.

Most experimental results do not produce large changes in human understanding.

Improvements in theoretical scientific understanding typically result from a gradual process of development over time,

Sometimes across different domains of science.

Scientific models vary in the extent to which they have been experimentally tested and in their acceptance in the scientific community.

In general,

Explanations become accepted over time as evidence accumulates on a given topic and the explanation in question proves more powerful than its alternatives at explaining the evidence.

Often,

Subsequent researchers reformulate the explanations over time or combine explanations to produce new explanations.

Tao sees the scientific method in terms of an evolutionary algorithm applied to science and technology.

Scientific knowledge is closely tied to empirical findings and can remain subject to falsification if new experimental observations are incompatible with what is found.

That is,

No theory can ever be considered final since new problematic evidence might be discovered.

If such evidence is found,

A new theory may be proposed.

Or,

More commonly,

It is found that modifications to the previous theory are sufficient to explain the new evidence.

The strength of a theory relates to how long it has persisted without major alteration to its core principles.

Theories can also become subsumed by other theories.

For example,

Newton's law explained thousands of years of scientific observations of the planets almost perfectly.

However,

These laws were then determined to be special cases of a more general theory,

Relativity,

Which explained both the previously unexplained exceptions to Newton's laws and predicted and explained other observations,

Such as the deflection of light by gravity.

Thus,

In certain cases independent,

Unconnected,

Scientific observations can be connected,

Unified by the principles of increasing explanatory power.

Since new theories might be more comprehensive than what preceded them and thus be able to explain more than previous ones,

Successor theories might be able to meet a higher standard by explaining a larger body of observations than their predecessors.

For example,

The theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on Earth,

How species adapt to their environments,

And many other patterns observed in the natural world.

Its most recent major modification was unification with genetics to form the modern evolutionary synthesis.

In subsequent modifications,

It has also subsumed aspects of many other fields,

Such as biochemistry and molecular biology.

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