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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.]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @07:51AM
Much has been written about this by Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method [wikipedia.org]
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3629717.html [uchicago.edu]
Personally I suspect much of the confusion over the scientific method is caused by pseudoscience being allowed to pass as science for whatever social/political reasons of the day. My opinion on this issue is not yet mature though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @05:00PM
If we stop calling "cultural anthropology" science this problem will go away.
Fields called scientific or that train students at Universities or Colleges of Science do in fact follow or claim to follow a set of specific practices, the scientific method being the key one. This process is observing, creating testable hypotheses and trying to reject them through testing. If you aren't doing that then you by definition aren't doing science anymore. A lot of debate happens concerning what is and is not a valid test, but the process is generally followed.
Some sciences, such as botany and biology, spend a lot of time on cladistics, the observing part of the process. Theoretical physics focuses on the hypotheses part. Experimental physics focuses on the test part.
One part of this is that a person working as a scientist brings a set of observations and hypothesis to their work. Science doesn't just start from a blank clipboard in a lab at 8am on Monday. For instance, your question is a central part of any masters or doctorate program in graduate studies. The Scientific Method helps winnow which hypothesis are not true and leave everyone with a better idea of what, where, how and why the world works. Papers generally elaborate and speculate about (bullshit on) the import of the successful - least failing - ideas tested. But these ideas are still tested.
Reading recent cultural anthropology papers leads me to think that someone is focusing on the bullshit part and forget about the test part.
Aside from Ron L. Hubbard's work, what would Experimental Cultural Anthropology even look like?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday November 02 2015, @07:07PM
Experimental Cultural Anthropoligy would be immoral, but it could, in principle, be the same sort of science as AstroPhysics or Paleontology. The problem is that people don't merely observed, but are observed to be observing, so you get the kind of problems that Quantum Physics has to deal with combined with the lack of ability to do experiments that AstroPhysics has.
That said, if you pronounce with certainty without having extensively confirmed hypotheses after formulating them, then you don't count as a science. The heart of science is observational confirmation or refuation of hypothesis AFTER the formulation of the hypothesis.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.