h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Scientific Method - A881237
Author: NAITA (xy, not xx) - H2G2 Skeptics A873038 - U75717

A short and hopefully usefull description of the scientific method

I like it. What a pity that the method is not more generally known and appreciated. Your article should help.

A few spellings:
'doing' in line 4 of Starting over
'revealed' on the last line of Prediction and Experiment
'useful' (one L) on the last line of The Scientific Method and Truth.



John Luke

Just a quick note to suggest you mention economics and politics in your footnote on soft sciences as they are part of the 'social sciences' and practice the scientific method to a great degree (although sometimes controversially in the case of politics but definitely in the case of economics).

Otherwise good entry !

"but definitely in the case of economics"?

this is some other version of the scientific method, which includes postulated but unmeasurable variables that can even be measured indirectly then.

nice article. You might think that some of the stuff on my webpage http://www.xyroth-enterprises.co.uk/science.htm is worth adding as well, or you might just link to it.

up to you though.

keep up the good work.

*approves*



A couple of spelling errors there, there's a diong and a reveiled in there somewhere and that is the harchest critcism I can muster for this one.

Excellent stuff.

Orcus

I've fixed the diong, the reveiled (even though I think reveiled should be allowed. ) and the extra 'l'. I also added economics to the soft science footnote. It's not supposed to be a complete list, so I left politics out.
Xyroth, I wouldn't mind to put in something about the background of the method, but it would have to either be even shorter than your page, or an entry of itself. I don't want to be a critic (after all this thread is supposed to critisise me, and not the reviewers ) but I feel your treatment of the subject is a tad too superficial and raises more questions than it answers.
I've got suggestions in another thread that I should write more about how the method is implied, and especially in the soft sciences. Again I feel that this is a subject worthy of an entry all of its own.

too right my page is too short. but it was required to be generated to link together a whole lot of other pages. It will be getting an update as soon as I get a gap in the set of pages that have to be updated.

partly my page was intentionally designed to raise questions, but feel free to link to it or not as you wish.

anyway, keep up the good work on this entry.

Good entry!

I didn't understand the paragraph with the title "Observations" at all. Is it about the observations or about the hypothesis? It should be reworded so that I can understand it.

Some typo/grammar points:

mudling --> muddying
truth behind, sometimes flawed, observations --> truth behind sometimes flawed observations
precition --> prediction
measurment --> measurement
there has been cases --> there have been cases
exiting --> exciting
for the reader? --> for the reader!

Well done Naita!

Perhaps it's worth mentioning that theories are applicable (to avoid 'true') in their respective scope. In the initial hypothesis it's rarely said what exactly the scope is, due to lack of knowledge. This is only revealed in another of those cycles.

I'll try an example: I can divide a bar of chocolate and get two smaller pieces. The hypothesis is: I can repeat this and will be getting smaller pieces of chocolate every time.
This hypothesis is true for all attempts that use a knife, but as soon as the experiment arrives at really tiny levels, I'll have to split molecules first, then atoms. Plus the pieces won't be 'chocolate' anymore. Oops!

Another example would be Newton's Laws of Motion ( A121041 ) which have their limits a) at high speeds and b) when it comes to really huge sizes because there's some difficulty defining what exactly a 'straight line' in a curved space is.



Oh, is there any chance of linking to A600940, Endless Loops ? I think the scientific method is just another example.

Gnomon, you didn't understand it because you are stupid! Only kidding, it was crappy. I've tried rewording it, it _is_ about the observations, but you'll have to be the judge on whether or not it's understandable.
Thanks for the typos, I think I got all the ones you mentioned.

Sir Bossel, scope might be worth a mention. Well actually, it _is_ worth a mention, but I'm going to leave it out if I can't find a good way to insert it without rewriting the whole shebang. I can likely fit it in in connection with the link to Lies, damn lies and science lessons.

Endless loops are on my todo list to link from the word "indefinitely" in the new sentence about repetition right after the list of steps.

I've done a few small changes suggested here and other places, and hope that it's starting to look finished now. I'll try to write a section about the adaptations of the scientific method to the "soft" sciences to put at the end, but it'll have to wait at least until tomorrow (and if not tomorrow then over the weekend.)

Thanks for all the helpful comments so far.

I think it's a great article! It's got a few typos I think that the SubEds will get, but I very much like the article!

(Only being slighly here ... Don't be fooled by my own name appearing in the "Author" area - I merely helped Naita with the early revisions, 99% of the credit is all his!)


- JD

That paragraph is better now. Either that or I'm not stupid anymore.

First and foremost: this is a Good Entry. I have comments to make, but that doesn't change what is basically a useful and informative contribution to the Guide.

There are two problems with the scientific method. The first is that - because humans do not have objective perception - we cannot *objectively* verify objective truth (or the lack of it) in the real world. The second is that the scientific method relies on induction - deriving general conclusions from specific measurements - which is not objectively valid.

It's too easy to dismiss these points with the comment "that's just philosophy - we don't have time for pedantic quibbling". The fact is that - in this case at least - the philosophy and the real world are intimate companions. To ignore the philosophy is also to ignore the pretence that, although we are doing things that are objectively invalid, what we are doing is still objectively valid....

The scientific method is not objectively valid, and the entry does not make this clear.

The problem is with objectivity and its pursuit, not with the real world or the practitioners of the scientific method. We all know that our perceptions are reliable enough for most purposes, although they let us down occasionally. Similarly, we know that induction works quite often enough for it to be a useful and worthwhile technique.

Science is based upon the myth that it is objective and objectively valid, and so are its methods and its products. This is nonsense, and it is the *dishonesty* that's the problem, nothing else. This entry should go just a little farther than it does to make the shortcomings of the scientific method clear.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I don't understand your point, Pattern Chaser. There is an assumption in the Scientific Method that the universe is consistent - what applies in one place also applies in another. Surely if this is true, induction is a valid process?

I understand induction to be the derivation of general principles from specific data (i.e. measurements). This is not objectively valid because, no matter how many conforming measurements you take, there is no guarantee that the next measurement won't disprove the principle you're trying to derive. Isn't this similar to hypotheses having to be falsifiable?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I'll try to address your concerns in the as yet unwritten final section "The case against".
I'll fit in the fact that the method relies on observations that aren't objectively verifiable (I'll still say "that's just philosophy" It's all we've got.) I'll also mention that 'this has happened before, so it will happen again' is also an unprovable assumption. Then I'll try to sum up the ways the method is deliberately violated to fit the 'soft' sciences. I'm hoping I can do this in a few simple paragraphs though, without actually explaining things properly.
But that's because a proper explanation would be looong, and because _my_ explanation would most likely be wrooong.

I quite agree that clarity in the text is of prime importance.


Yes, there *is* an extent to which I'm involving you in something that isn't your fault, nor is it *only* related to the scientific method. Nevertheless, the fallacy that science and its tools and methods are objective, and objectively valid, has been pushed at us for so long that we tend to accept it without question. It's the deliberate dishonesty that *really* annoys me.


Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

It also too easy (and often done by the ignorant) to use your point Pattern Chaser to therefore rubbish all science and say that scientist don't know what they are talking about - ever. An equally invalid point.

Please note that I was not calling *you* ignorant in the last post - not my intention at all. I hope it doesn't look like it implies that.

* Assists Orcus in removing foot from own mouth whilst patting on the back and making re-assuring noises. *

Good article - an entertaining presentation of one of the basics of scientific theory.

Maybe because I know it - I thought that it did make clear that the tenets of postulation mean that this can only be a continual testing process, and it does say in the footnote that in science there are only theories - no facts. This could perhaps be underlined by refering to something that we all treat as a fact eg - 'The sum of the square of the hypotenesue is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides' is Pythagarus's THEORUM but otherwise I think its quite clear.