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posted by martyb on Monday November 02 2015, @07:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the can-we-debate-this-scientifically? dept.

It's probably best to get the bad news out of the way first. The so-called scientific method is a myth. That is not to say that scientists don't do things that can be described and are unique to their fields of study. But to squeeze a diverse set of practices that span cultural anthropology, paleobotany, and theoretical physics into a handful of steps is an inevitable distortion and, to be blunt, displays a serious poverty of imagination. Easy to grasp, pocket-guide versions of the scientific method usually reduce to critical thinking, checking facts, or letting "nature speak for itself," none of which is really all that uniquely scientific. If typical formulations were accurate, the only location true science would be taking place in would be grade-school classrooms.

Scratch the surface of the scientific method and the messiness spills out. Even simplistic versions vary from three steps to eleven. Some start with hypothesis, others with observation. Some include imagination. Others confine themselves to facts. Question a simple linear recipe and the real fun begins. A website called Understanding Science offers an "interactive representation" of the scientific method that at first looks familiar. It includes circles labeled "Exploration and Discovery" and "Testing Ideas." But there are others named "Benefits and Outcomes" and "Community Analysis and Feedback," both rare birds in the world of the scientific method. To make matters worse, arrows point every which way. Mouse over each circle and you find another flowchart with multiple categories and a tangle of additional arrows.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/10/28/scientific-method-myth/

Excerpted from NEWTON'S APPLE AND OTHER MYTHS ABOUT SCIENCE, edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis, published by Harvard University Press.

[See our earlier discussion: Have Some Physicists Abandoned the Empirical Method? - Ed.]


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 02 2015, @09:31AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday November 02 2015, @09:31AM (#257424) Homepage Journal

    In mathematics one can provide a theorem but only with respect to the postulates and rules of inference of the system within which that theorem holds true.

    The best you can do is falsify a bad theory.

    If a theory seems to be true the best you can do is gain a certain confidence, by falsifying all the competing theories but it happens from time to time that "accepted" theories are falsified. For example Newton proved Kepler wrong, in that the orbits of the planets aren't really ellipses, because all the planets exert gravity on each other. Actually planetary orbits are subtly complex.

    Finally, scientists don't study the scientific method. That's what philosophers of science do. It is quite uncommon for scientists to even know much about the philosophy of science.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @04:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @04:35PM (#257576)

    The best you can do is falsify a bad theory.

    Not really possible. The negation of a conjunction only tells you that some element is false. You always have to make some auxiliary assumptions when testing a theory (such as that the equipment is functioning properly), it may be one of those that are incorrect rather than the theory.

    The modus tollens logic:

    (T & A) -> O
    ~0 -> (~T | ~A)

    Theory T and assumptions A entail observation O. Not observation O entails either not T or not A. Usually A will consist of a set of assumptions and it will be impractical to check all of them. So, in practice, science cannot prove nor disprove a theory. What it can do is fail to disprove a theory despite _severe_ testing, which means the theory must be making useful predictions.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 02 2015, @10:24PM

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday November 02 2015, @10:24PM (#257716) Homepage Journal

      Kepler obtained the data to which his Kepler's Law was quite a good fit by timing star and planet transits with, more or less, a gunsight, a grandfather clock and his naked eyes.

      Suppose I bought a decent spotting telescope at walmart, used my iPhone as the timer - its clock ultimately derives from an atomic clock - with a vernier on the protractor used to measure the altitude of the transit?

      I expect that all by itself, over the course of five years or so, would produce data of such precision that it would demonstrate that the planetary orbits are not ellipses.

      Newton derived his Law of Gravity from Kepler's Law by assuming that the planets don't exert any force on each other - that only the sun gravitates with the planets, and that the earth and moon only gravitate with each other.

      Newton knew very well that simplifying assumption was false but Kepler's Data was inaccurate enough that one could neglect interplanetary gravity.

      There are some aspects of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity which have not been tested. Every test we try produces data that fits the theory but there are some tests that are difficult to perform because they require spacecraft, huge masses and the like. So there is still _some_ possibility that Einstein was incorrect.

      That is, we do not know that Einstein got it right, the best we can say is that we do not know that he got it wrong.

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 03 2015, @06:57AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @06:57AM (#257846) Journal

      Well, get your mind out of the gutter and quit obsessing over T&A!

      Nice trick with the disjunction in the antecedent. Won't save you, though, from the confirmation bias of a Modus Ponens! Aha! Have at thee!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @11:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @11:09PM (#257736)

    The idea that science is valid is not scientific