The Scientific Method For Beginners

Peg has asked to have the scientific method explained.The scientific method is this:(1) Formulate a hypothesis.
(2) Using logic, derive predictions from that hypothesis.
(3) Compare the predictions against observation.
(4) If reality corresponds with the predictions of the hypothesis, then we are obliged to regard it a proven theory until and unless we find contrary evidence, at which point we would go back to step (1). Otherwise, we must accept it as a solid theory and can then use it to help us understand and interact with the world. NOTE: Many people would add another step at the start:

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(0) Make observations as a basis for the guess made in step (1).

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And in fact this is what usually happens, but it is not strictly necessary: we could pull our hypothesis out of a hat or have it revealed to us by an angel, and we would still be following the scientific method if we tested it against observation.---Are there any questions?

True enough: but my description was not meant to imply that we would have to decide that our initial hypothesis was wrong about everything when we found disconfirming evidence. Obviously when we return to step (1), the partial success of our former hypothesis is one of the facts for which we would want our new hypothesis to account: we must regard this as one of the facts gathered in "step (0)".

What I have described is in fact the very heart of the process. Let's look at the two things you mention.Peer review. This cannot be "the very heart of the process", because if it was, one man on a desert island wouldn't be able to follow the scientific method: which would be a strange conclusion.Peer review assists the process because it alllows people to check (a) whether your predictions really are logical consequences of your hypotheses (b) whether there might be some observations already made, contrary to your predictions, of which you were unaware (c) whether there are alternate hypotheses which also predict your observations.Peer review is therefore a way for scientists to pool their knowledge and intelligence, as indeed is the whole process of publication generally. It is therefore very useful as a social institution, but we can't consider it as essential, since a solitary person on a desert island could prectise science --- just not so well.Replication. This falls under point (3). If your hypothesis predict that under a given set of circumstances some observation will always be made, and in fact it can only be made occasionally, then obviously your hypothesis has failed the observational test.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Sure, but then a community of scientists can also be wrong, perhaps because none of them have the necessary information. Once, every Western scientist (or "natural philosopher" as they would have been called back then) would have told you that no mammal laid eggs.What we can say is that by having more people making conjectures, examining the reasoning, and making observations, we can be more confident in the results, because the scientific method thrives and grows from such activities. But one person following the scientific method is still following it.---If a community of scientists is necessary to the scientific method, then how large does the community have to be? You lay yourself open to the Sorites Paradox.---Our man on the desert island might eat a meal of purple and yellow berries, and spend the night with acute diarrhea. He might then come up with hypotheses: "only the yellow berries cause diarrhea"; "only the purple berries cause diarrhea"; "both sorts of berries cause diarrhea"; "only in combination do they cause diarrhea"; "the berries had nothing to do with it, to make a connection between these berries and my stomach upset would be merely an instance of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy." He can then test these hypotheses in a manner that is, I trust, obvious. If he does so, would one deny that he is following the scientific method --- just because there are no peer-reviewed journals in which to publish his results? But in such cases this just acts as a social check on whether the person publishing the results is following the scientific method and doing it right: for example, it checks against the possibility that they were publishing completely bogus data.Our castaway with the multicolored berries doesn't need someone else to check whether he's doing his experiments honestly, or cherry-picking (so to speak) his data. A curious contention. One either is or is not practicing the scientific method. If one is, one is, whether or not one brings it to someone else's attention.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I believe I see the difference between our perspectives.You, it seems, would define the scientific method by reference to what the body of professionals called "scientists" actually do, and then (if you wanted to go into it more deeply) explain why this is the best way of understanding nature.I, on the other hand, start off by asking how anyone can understand nature at all --- a man on a desert island, or a newborn baby. From there I would work up to explaining how what scientists actually do is (more or less, up 'til now) the best way of achieving this goal.We might call these "top down" and "bottom up" explanations of science. I wish to explain it from the bottom up.Hence I begin with this statement: we test the logical consequences of our hypotheses against observation. The question of how we may do this best can then be derived (empirically) from this proposition.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You may indeed. I was waiting for you to ask.Consider first of all a hypothesis such as: "Aardvarks don't breathe fire". Note that there is no relevant experiment that we can perform. All we can do is observe a lot of aardvarks and see whether or not they breathe fire.On the other hand, suppose we have a hypothesis such as "Diamonds dissolve in goat's blood" (as people believed in the Middle Ages).Now, in that case we could just resort to passive observation --- we could keep a close eye on any diamonds in the vicinity, see if they ever fell into goat's blood, and then check to see if they dissolved.But there is a more practical way to do this. We can take a diamond and deliberately drop it into goat's blood, and see what happens. We can bring about the set of circumstances about which our hypothesis makes predictions.This is an experiment: we have artificially produced a set of circumstances under which we can test our hypothesis. You can see that this is more convenient than waiting for the right set of circumstances to just happen.An experiment, then, is when we have a hypothesis which predicts what observations we will make under a certain set of circumstances, and we act to bring that set of circumstances about.Hence experiments are part of point (3) in my explanation of the scientific method. We test the predictions of our hypotheses against observation: and so if our hypothesis predicts the observations that we would make if we performed a given experiment, then we perform the experiment and see if the predicted observations occur.You should note that a hypothesis need not predict the results of any experiment: as in the case: "Aardvarks don't breathe fire". There is no experiment in that case: there is just observation of aardvarks.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Please don't confuse the issue. My aim is to unconfuse Peg, not to bury Peg in verbal ambiguities.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Perhaps now would be a good time to digress a little and discuss the creationist attempt to rewrite the scientific method.Having vaguely grasped that experiments play some role in science, they wish to redefine the scientific method so that observations count for nothing, unless they are observations artificially induced by experiments. They wish to do so because obviously the evidence for the natural history of our planet rests on observations of nature which are not artificially induced, and so if they could make all those observations count for nothing, then the whole history of our planet would also go away. Like magic.Of course, if only experimental evidence counted, then they would also have to dismiss as unscientific such propositions as:* Pigs don't have wings.
* The ancient Egyptians didn't use mobile phones.
* Saturn has rings.
* The fact that this man has a bullet in his heart confirms the hypothesis that he was killed by gunshot.
* I have two legs.
* Aardvarks don't breathe fire.
* The sun didn't fall out of the sky yesterday.By comparison, if we start off, as I started off, by explaining that we test hypotheses against observation, then we can understand why the statements listed above are scientific, and we can also understand why experiments are useful: because sometimes we can use them to elicit observations which are relevant to a hypothesis.---How do creationists live with the failure of their "scientific method"?(I) Well, in the first place, they don't care. They don't need a general method of testing propositions about the natural world. They're not interested in finding out about it. That's not their job. Their job is to defend their dogma at all costs, and to do that they need to abolish evolution. And for that purpose, this foolishness where only the observations of experiments count for anything will do just fine. Never mind that they'd then have to dismiss as unscientific the proposition that the ancient Egyptians didn't use mobile phones. That's not their problem. They don't have to think about that. It's irrelevant to their goals.(II) In the second place, sometimes it doesn't matter. For example, when creationists are pretending that "evolutionism" is just as much based on "faith" and "philosophical assumptions" and so forth as is creationism, then it doesn't matter that the creationist "scientific method" wouldn't support creationism, because they are trying to pretend that both are equally without support, except that creationism is supported by God's Holy Word whereas "evolutionism" rests on Evil Atheism. This argument simply tries to drag real science down to their level of dogmatic faith: and if, in the process, they admit that there is no evidence for fiat creation, this is not a problem for this particular argument.And as all their arguments are ad hoc, and don't need have to have any logical consistency, they can always ignore their own argument when they want to pretend that there is evidence for creationism. This brings us on to point (III).(III) In the third place, they don't notice. A creationist is perfectly capable of trotting out this nonsense about the scientific method and then claiming to have geological evidence for the historicity of Noah's Flood. The only consistency a creationist needs is to consistently assert that (a) scientists are wrong and (b) he is right. By asserting that scientists can't know about the past, because their claims are not supported by experiment, he fulfills obligation (a); and by asserting that geology proves Noah's Flood, he fulfills obligation (b).Indeed, I have never seen a creationist argue that both creationism and "evolutionism" are both based on faith and then just walk away: he will always follow it up by claiming to have evidence that evolution didn't happen and/or that fiat creation did.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

By my recollection, you misunderstood me as saying that experimentation is not part of the process.Let me make myself clear.If our hypothesis predicts the results of an experiment that we can do, then doing that experiment is part of the process.But if we have some hypothesis such as: "Aardvarks don't breathe fire", which cannot be confirmed by experiment, but only by observation, then the conclusion that aardvarks don't breathe fire is still perfectly scientific.It seems to me that you have confused two propositions, one that I've made, one that I haven't. I say that you can do science without experiments. I don't say that experiments have no place in science.By analogy, I would say that England and Australia can play a legitimate game of rugby without either side scoring a try. I do not say that tries have no place in rugby.(I seem to remember that you're Australian, if not, I'll see if I can think up another metaphor.)

Well, let me weigh in.First, let me say that my original description of the scientific method was a framework. Let us by all means consider how various details of scientific practice and scientific progress fit in this framework, otherwise there would be nothing more to discuss.Now, about the revision of scientific concepts. If we replace one concept which has been successful with a more successful concept, one of the facts that our new idea has to explain is why the old idea was somewhat successful.Take, for example, Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment. This is wrong: genes do not always assort independently. But they do if they're on different chromosomes. Advances in genetics didn't require us to simply dispose of Mendelian genetics: on the contrary, it allowed us to see why he was so nearly right.Even when an idea turns out to be fundamentally wrong, we are still obliged to explain why it convinced scientists that it was right. Why did naturalists once favor teleological explanations for morphology? Because, of course, the appearance of evolution is (superficially) like the appearance of design: for example, a well-adapted fish would be streamlined, and so would a well-designed fish: to this limited extent teleology and evolution make the same predictions. If the theory of evolution couldn't explain the former success of teleology as an explanatory framework and research program, then that would constitute a difficulty for the theory of evolution.

I do not think that, and did not say so.It is true that creationists do not have a single unifying world-view besides the need to deny evolution. For this reason, their arguments, which are often mutually exclusive, need to be debunked piecemeal. ... besides the fact that I did not make it ... No, some of them use other dumb unscientific arguments.A similar diversity may be seen in 9/11 conspiracy theorists ("Truthers"). They know what they have to deny, but this gives them no unifying standard as to what they ought to assert. This is not precise, succinct, and clear-cut, because few creationists can decide what they mean by "macro-evolution" and those that can disagree with one another. Basically what a creationist means by "macro-evolution" is the amount of evolution in which he, personally, disbelieves. (Though there are exceptions to this, too.)And what you can mean by "hypostasis" in this context, I have no idea, and nor, I suspect, would anyone else. This also robs your statement of precision and the quality of being "clear-cut".One final ambiguity is that you speak of "observations I have made in the world around me". Now, since you are a creationist, it is not clear whether by this you are actually referring to observations that you have made in the world around you, or to dumb falsehoods that you have read in creationist pamphlets and websites. Evolutionists do not "defend their dogma at all costs", because talking rubbish is not a price that they have to pay. Believe me, I would be the very last person to attribute consistency of thought to the creationist movement. What you have written is, of course, completely untrue. Whatever possessed you to write it?Let us take this as an example of the sort of rubbish that you talk. Naturally. My reasons for doing so are, however, probably not on topic in this thread unless you mean this query to lead back into a discussion of the scientific method.P.S: Welcome to the forums.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, I have said quite clearly and explicitly that creationists are not consistent.I'll say it again. Creationists can't get their story straight.This is, of course, because they know what they need to deny --- but knowing that they need to deny the facts of biology gives them no clue as to what they should claim to be true. Now that is a generalization that I am prepared to make. I would be the last person in the world to claim that creationists are consistent -- however, I will freely admit that they're consistently wrong I find it very easy to "dismiss" the imaginary people who live in your head. What a strange lie. Tell me, did you really hope to deceive me by saying this? No. We don't have to tell stupid lies. I'm gonna guess that that's because no logical argument, no scientific fact, and no evidence has been presented to them. If your ravings on this thread are anything to go by. No. I am not going to spend "a few days" trying to guess what dumb mistake you want to make about the Big Bang.Just tell me what it is. On another thread. Evolution. So glad I could clear that up for you.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

One of the things that puzzles me about people like you is this: you lie when you must know that you're going to get caught.You're not lying to a bunch of kids in Sunday school, when you might have a chance of getting away with it --- you are lying to people who, as you know perfectly well, are intimately familiar with the EvC debate. You cannot possibly have the faintest, slenderest hope that anyone reading your lies will be deceived by them.So what puzzles me is --- why do you bother? I can understand why someone might lie with the intention to deceive. That would be kind of the whole point of lying. But you lie when it is absolutely certain that the only effect that this will have on your audience is to convince them that you're a liar.As your lies are also off-topic, I should like to ask you not to mess up my thread with your pointless, hopeless, fatuous lies. Thank you.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Please give references and quotations.Please give them on another thread, because the first interesting thing you have said on this thread is still off topic.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Hooray! An on-topic post!You are wrong.In the first place, I chose my words very carefully. I did not say that if reality corresponds with the predictions of the hypothesis, then the hypothesis was proven. I said that in that case we are obliged to regard it as proven until and unless we find contrary evidence. And we are. If you will not agree that it has been proved that the Earth is not flat, then you must admit that, unless and until we find contrary evidence, we must regard it as proven. For example, we must direct the navigation of our shipping according to the theory that the Earth is not flat. Also, we must write in our science textbooks that the Earth is not flat.In the second place, you speak of "the philosophy of science", as though there was only one. Now, according to the terminology used by the philosopher of science Karl Popper, we cannot say that we have proved that the Earth is not flat. However, according to the philosophy of science that I adhere to, we can say that we have proved that the Earth is not flat.I compromised between these two views by using the precise wording that I chose --- that we are obliged to regard this proposition as proven.The title of this thread is not "The Terminology Of Science Invented By Karl Popper For Beginners", it is "The Scientific Method For Beginners". If Wikipedia wants to conflate the two, that is not my problem, that is theirs.