Ramium
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My thoughts on the scientific method
Hi all . Just wanted to share some of my thoughts. Feel free to disagree, this is
just how I see it.
What is the scientific method?
The basis of the scientific method is observation. Things are observed, and theories formulated to explain the observations. Over time, the best
theories which consistently explain the most, rise to the surface and are adopted as truths. An understanding of reality is thus slowly built up like
a jigsaw.
But it seems to me that there is a gaping problem with this approach, what reason do we have to believe that what we observe has anything to do with
whats really there? We don't experience reality directly, we experience it through the potentially distorted window of our senses. Thus the scientific
method doesn't build up a picture of reality, but only a picture of our perception of reality.
At the center of science is the belief that truth is the highest good. Why do we pursue truth so habitually? surely becoming the most integrated and
happy person we can, and then spreading that love and acceptance out to the world around us is a more worthwhile thing to pursue then truth.
Are we even capable of pursuing truth? Money, politics and personal bias inevitably get involved.
[Edited on 10-9-2017 by Ramium]
insoluble in society
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Sulaiman
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The answer is ...... 42
Too many questions in one statement;
most of your questions are answered here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
I have read many papers etc. that have very good experimental data - but have poor interpretations of the results.
Personal perception, knowledge, bias etc. are difficult to avoid, e.g. Einstein's cosmological constant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27...
[Edited on 10-9-2017 by Sulaiman]
CAUTION : Hobby Chemist, not Professional or even Amateur
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wg48
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@Ramium
Assuming you mean by “what is really there” that there is some absolute truth then you are correct. We sense everything through our senses so it
is impossible to know the absolute truth. I or we may all be a simulation in a computer, perhaps the Matrix. So what??? I and we can still find rules
that predict things even if my or our so-called reality is a simulation.
In what I perceive as my reality it’s ridiculous to suggest that “we” (assuming you mean people in general) only pursue truth.
There are whole philosophy books written on the meaning of truth/reality. It an old subject.
[Edited on 10-9-2017 by wg48]
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unionised
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Quote: Originally posted by Ramium  |
surely becoming the most integrated and happy person we can, and then spreading that love and acceptance out to the world around us is a more
worthwhile thing to pursue then truth.
[Edited on 10-9-2017 by Ramium] |
I often find that they amount to the same thing.
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SWIM
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"Are we even capable of pursuing the truth?"
If you don't know if we're capable of pursuing truth, then You don't know if you're capable of trying to come up with your thoughts on the scientific
method (which are obviously untrue, but still qualify as an attempt by you to pursue truth).
If you don't know if you're capable of trying to come up with your thoughts on the scientific method, then You can't know if you're capable of ever
having thoughts on the scientific method.
If you don't know if you're even capable of ever having thoughts on the scientific method, then you can't even know what those thoughts are.
So why the hell are we listening to you?
Come back when you figure out if you're ever going to be capable of figuring out whether you can actually ever figure anything out.
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XeonTheMGPony
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religions deal with "truth" Science deals with facts and reality.
I chose to pursue reality and make my mind conform as much to it as possible, I couldn't care less about "truths"
But this could be a semantic issue depending on how you are using the word "truth"
The point of the scientific method is to weed out personal interpretation as much as possible, this is why we have the peer review system, it isn't
perfect but it has given as magnitudes more then any "truth" has!
Our minds are craptastical at discerning reality reliably, the scientific method assists in correcting this, the better we learn about our reality the
more correct predictions we can make and better conform to objective reality and this tends to lead to success, long life spans, easier living, less
preventable deaths excetra.
[Edited on 10-9-2017 by XeonTheMGPony]
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Assured Fish
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First off, great to see another kiwi on the forum, i dont see to many active kiwi chemists around at the moment.
Anyhow its not often that such a question comes up on the forum (Perhaps its because we all know the answer), so ill throw in my two bricks off salt
to satisfy my ego before the thread inevitably dies.
| Quote: |
The basis of the scientific method is observation. Things are observed, and theories formulated to explain the observations. Over time, the best
theories which consistently explain the most, rise to the surface and are adopted as truths. An understanding of reality is thus slowly built up like
a jigsaw.
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This by itself is an enormous over simplification of the general scientific method, so much so that it sounds like the kinda thing a pastier would
tell his flock to undermine science and reasoning.
You have failed to highlight the important necessity of the null and alternative hypothesis and how they are used. You used the word
"theories" when in reality most hypotheses never become theories at all.
You have also somewhat failed to mention how certain Hypotheses or as you called them "theories" are labelled as the best, which is
perhaps the most important part.
| Quote: |
But it seems to me that there is a gaping problem with this approach, what reason do we have to believe that what we observe has anything to do with
whats really there? We don't experience reality directly, we experience it through the potentially distorted window of our senses. Thus the scientific
method doesn't build up a picture of reality, but only a picture of our perception of reality.
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This is essentially solipsism.
This idea has been countered a billion times over.
"If my world is an illusion then i am an illusion as well".
OUR world doesn't have to be the actual reality, we will continue to pursue the truth either way, If we find out that we are nothing more than a
simulation inside another simulation then that does not make our reality any less real, it just makes it a reality inside another reality, more to
explore either way.
The reason why the scientific method is what we generally use to determine the truth, is because it mother fucken works.
If it didn't work then we would not have electricity, we would not have computers or cars, we would not have medicine or god forbid
chemistry .
When it does not work or makes an inaccurate prediction then we must take it back to the lab and shoot it full of criticism until either it does work,
or it is proven invalid.
| Quote: |
At the center of science is the belief that truth is the highest good. Why do we pursue truth so habitually? surely becoming the most integrated and
happy person we can, and then spreading that love and acceptance out to the world around us is a more worthwhile thing to pursue then truth.
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Ok everything else that you have remarked is excusable, but this right here is if anything a strong indicator that you need to seriously consider your
reasoning for perusing science as a hobby.
"What people call love, is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed"
It is instinctual, you can by all means express love if you feel the need to maintain your empathy but the universe does not care. Personally I find
it a rather boring concept though one i am willing to maintain, for the betterment of people i have empathy for.
I don't entirely disagree with unionised but the roots of both stem from a different part of my brain.
Science is about learning and shattering your own world view when you learn something new, such a feeling is more orgasmic than well an orgasm.
I pursue chemistry specifically because it is the closest thing to real magic to which our universe will allow. I am obsessed with manipulating matter
just for the simple sake of understanding how to manipulate matter, there are other reasons for my interest in this hobby but this one sticks out.
If you are incapable of understanding this or better yet formulating your own reasons for perusing science, then i must concur you don't have much
place here on this forum.
[Edited on 11-9-2017 by Assured Fish]
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Melgar
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My favorite encapsulation of the scientific method... not necessarily how science works, but how science should work, in order to achieve
useful results, was Richard Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science" speech, first given to the 1978 graduating class at CalTech, then adapted into this
article:
| Quote: Originally posted by Richard Feynman | During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was
discovered for separating the ideas–which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became
organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we
have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked–or very little of it
did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded
consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I’ve concluded that it’s not a scientific world.
Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for
investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I’m overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of
mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to
Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it’s a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn’t realize
how much there was.
At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences
has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky shore below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a
beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.
One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn’t seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, “Gee!
How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude babe?”
I’m trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, “I’m, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?”
“Sure,” she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby.
I think to myself, “What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!” He starts to rub her big toe. “I think I feel it, “he says.
“I feel a kind of dent–is that the pituitary?”
I blurt out, “You’re a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!”
They looked at me, horrified–I had blown my cover–and said, “It’s reflexology!”
I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.
That’s just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze
there was, Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation,
to see a demonstration of both mind-reading and bending keys. He didn’t do any mind-reading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my
boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in
the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate
that phenomenon.
But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to cheek on
them by noticing that nothing really worked. So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate.
There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you’ll see the reading scores keep going down, or
hardly going up, in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There’s a witch doctor remedy that doesn’t
work. It ought to be looked into; how do they know that their method should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no
progress–lots of theory, but no progress–in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.
Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A
teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way–or is even fooled by the
school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another,
feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn’t do “the right thing,” according to the experts. So we really ought to look into
theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science.
I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is
a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve
arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces
on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re
doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these
things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something
essential, because the planes don’t land.
Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how
they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of
the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned
in studying science in school–we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation.
It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought
that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report
everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results,
and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have
been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all
wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the
facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to
make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the
idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that
leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn’t soak through food.
Well, that’s true. It’s not dishonest. But the thing I’m talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it’s a matter of
scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if
operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will–including Wesson oil. So it’s the implication which has been
conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.
We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or
right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will
not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind
of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.
A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject.
Nevertheless it should be remarked that this is not the only difficulty. That’s why the planes didn’t land–but they don’t land.
We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron
by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It’s a little bit off, because he had the
incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It’s interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If
you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan’s, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, and
the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher. Why didn’t they discover that the new
number was higher right away? It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of–this history–because it’s apparent that people did things like this:
When they got a number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be wrong–and they would look for and find a reason why
something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan’s value they didn’t look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were
too far off, and did other things like that. We’ve learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don’t have that kind of a disease.
But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves–of having utter scientific integrity–is, I’m sorry to say, something that we
haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis. The first principle is that you
must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s
easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman
when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something
like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your
rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you
ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he
wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we
won’t get support for more research of this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you
should explain to the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to
publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of
results. I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a
hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a result, it seems to me you’re
not giving scientific advice. You’re being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they
can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
Other kinds of errors are more characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One
of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this–it had been found by others that under certain circumstances,
X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do the
experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A. I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the
experiment of the other person–to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she
would know that the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.
She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already
been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat
psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happens. Nowadays there’s a certain danger of the same thing happening,
even in the famous (?) field of physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory,
where a person used deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might happen with light hydrogen, he had to use data from
someone else’s experiment on light hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus. When asked why, he said it was because he couldn’t get time on
the program (because there’s so little time and it’s such expensive apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus because
there wouldn’t be any new result. And so the men in charge of programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more money to keep the
thing going for public relations purposes, they are destroying–possibly–the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the
thing. It is often hard for the experimenters there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands.
All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes,
and so on–with little clear result. But in 1937a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side
where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down
from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.
The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before?
Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures
on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to
change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement
in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell. He finally found that they could tell by the
way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all
possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats
could tell. Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible,
because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using, not what you think it’s using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what
conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.
I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any
of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no
attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn’t discover anything about the rats. In fact, he
discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of
cargo cult science. Another example is the ESP experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other people.
As various people have made criticisms–and they themselves have made criticisms of their own experiments, they improve the techniques so that the
effects are smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradually disappear. All the parapsychologists are looking for some experiment that can be
repeated, that you can do again and get the same effect, statistically, even. They run a million rats no, it’s people this time they do a lot of
things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they try it they don’t get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is an
irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science? This man also speaks about a new institution, in a talk in which he was
resigning as Director of the Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling people what to do next, he says that one of the things they have to do is be
sure they only train students who have shown their ability to get PSI results to an acceptable extent–not to waste their time on those ambitious and
interested students who get only chance results. It is very dangerous to have such a policy in teaching–to teach students only how to get certain
results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific integrity. So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are
free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or
financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. |
The first step in the process of learning something is admitting that you don't know it already.
I'm givin' the spam shields max power at full warp, but they just dinna have the power! We're gonna have to evacuate to new forum software!
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Chemetix
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Ok, there are some things that the scientific method falls short on. Medical science is a good example of how the scientific method has its' short
comings. Try and apply the reductionist approach to a patient. You either respond to a treatment or you don't, no amount of accounting for variables
can predict how you respond or determine an outcome from a treatment or a drug. You can use controls and see how much above a base line you shift a
population with a medical intervention, but as an individual the scientific method for all its' predictive power is of little use.
But when you start talking about love and truth; eudemonism, as a substitute for an analytical tool, you have taken a serious tangent to what the
scientific method is about and what it can do.
You have effectively compared a micrometer with an impressionist.
I have to say 'uhnd thut's a buht uv a mustayk thehr bro!'
Sure, by all means, go out there and have experiences, relationships and realisations, but don't mistake this for a tool that has no equivalence for
determining the nature of reality.
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