I’m acquainted with the scientific method myself, but when I try to explain it to science deniers I always fall short of capturing what makes it such a universal and thorough method. Any help?
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Another approach is introducing the idea of quality of evidence. The lowest quality is testimonial/anecdotal going up to a meta analysis of double blind trials of large sample size. People who deny science are operating from the lowest quality of evidence, anything they believe in is based off of anecdotal evidence. A large problem with that kind of evidence, is it is unfalsifiable. It’s a closed loop. If you want to learn more about how to detect bullshit, check out Michael Shermer’s book – why people believe weird things.
Another approach is introducing the idea of quality of evidence. The lowest quality is testimonial/anecdotal going up to a meta analysis of double blind trials of large sample size. People who deny science are operating from the lowest quality of evidence, anything they believe in is based off of anecdotal evidence. A large problem with that kind of evidence, is it is unfalsifiable. It’s a closed loop. If you want to learn more about how to detect bullshit, check out Michael Shermer’s book – why people believe weird things.
What makes science truly a thorough process is not the scientific method itself, because at the end of the day, the scientific method uses a circular argument. This is known in philosophy as “the problem of induction,” as science uses its own history of results to justify it being a good judge of results.
What makes science a thorough process is that scientists hate being wrong even more than they hate having been wrong. When some scientist comes up with something new, it faces a gauntlet of other scientists attempting to disprove the new discovery. If the new discovery can hold up against all criticism, it can replace the old idea. Over time, the belief that the sun revolves around the earth was disproved by science, but even other scientists at the time had competing theories. Tycho Brahe in particular attempted to explain an alternative to the Copernican idea of how celestial bodies move, and Johannes Kepler though that the planets orbited based on a kind of mathematical perfection, where they all aligned with the nesting of perfect three-dimensional shapes called Platonic solids. You may know these shapes from the dice used for role-playing games.
Over time, the scientific community is what has made science work. The scientific method works because it is always open to questioning things, and it accepts the outcomes, no matter what those outcomes are. It isn’t a perfect guide to understanding the universe. Instead, it is a very basic framework for structuring a question about reality so that you can test an idea. The rest of science is data that we have accumulated by asking questions, making observations, and usually being disappointed.
What kind of science deniers are you talking to? How would reading off the process that constitutes the scientific method “fall short” of representing itself?
When a scientific hypothesis is created we construct 2 statements the first is the one we expect to be true if the thing we’re testing for is true. The next is what we expect if our hypothesis is false. We then test for the falseness. We don’t come in trying to prove ourselves right. Rather we try to prove ourselves wrong in every way possible. If after almost every reasonable test we can’t prove our idea wrong, then we can reject our false hypothesis.
Then we submit our findings to our peers for review and further testing. If every one of our peers cannot create a test that disproves our hypothesis then we have a possible theory. If we test that potential theory further and further and further until we have no other tests we can do to disprove it then it becomes the dominant theory.
And that’s the difference most people don’t understand. The scientific method is used in an attempt to prove the hypothesizer wrong. You have to approach your tests with every intent to prove your own ideas wrong.
What makes science truly a thorough process is not the scientific method itself, because at the end of the day, the scientific method uses a circular argument. This is known in philosophy as “the problem of induction,” as science uses its own history of results to justify it being a good judge of results.
What makes science a thorough process is that scientists hate being wrong even more than they hate having been wrong. When some scientist comes up with something new, it faces a gauntlet of other scientists attempting to disprove the new discovery. If the new discovery can hold up against all criticism, it can replace the old idea. Over time, the belief that the sun revolves around the earth was disproved by science, but even other scientists at the time had competing theories. Tycho Brahe in particular attempted to explain an alternative to the Copernican idea of how celestial bodies move, and Johannes Kepler though that the planets orbited based on a kind of mathematical perfection, where they all aligned with the nesting of perfect three-dimensional shapes called Platonic solids. You may know these shapes from the dice used for role-playing games.
Over time, the scientific community is what has made science work. The scientific method works because it is always open to questioning things, and it accepts the outcomes, no matter what those outcomes are. It isn’t a perfect guide to understanding the universe. Instead, it is a very basic framework for structuring a question about reality so that you can test an idea. The rest of science is data that we have accumulated by asking questions, making observations, and usually being disappointed.
What makes science truly a thorough process is not the scientific method itself, because at the end of the day, the scientific method uses a circular argument. This is known in philosophy as “the problem of induction,” as science uses its own history of results to justify it being a good judge of results.
What makes science a thorough process is that scientists hate being wrong even more than they hate having been wrong. When some scientist comes up with something new, it faces a gauntlet of other scientists attempting to disprove the new discovery. If the new discovery can hold up against all criticism, it can replace the old idea. Over time, the belief that the sun revolves around the earth was disproved by science, but even other scientists at the time had competing theories. Tycho Brahe in particular attempted to explain an alternative to the Copernican idea of how celestial bodies move, and Johannes Kepler though that the planets orbited based on a kind of mathematical perfection, where they all aligned with the nesting of perfect three-dimensional shapes called Platonic solids. You may know these shapes from the dice used for role-playing games.
Over time, the scientific community is what has made science work. The scientific method works because it is always open to questioning things, and it accepts the outcomes, no matter what those outcomes are. It isn’t a perfect guide to understanding the universe. Instead, it is a very basic framework for structuring a question about reality so that you can test an idea. The rest of science is data that we have accumulated by asking questions, making observations, and usually being disappointed.
When a scientific hypothesis is created we construct 2 statements the first is the one we expect to be true if the thing we’re testing for is true. The next is what we expect if our hypothesis is false. We then test for the falseness. We don’t come in trying to prove ourselves right. Rather we try to prove ourselves wrong in every way possible. If after almost every reasonable test we can’t prove our idea wrong, then we can reject our false hypothesis.
Then we submit our findings to our peers for review and further testing. If every one of our peers cannot create a test that disproves our hypothesis then we have a possible theory. If we test that potential theory further and further and further until we have no other tests we can do to disprove it then it becomes the dominant theory.
And that’s the difference most people don’t understand. The scientific method is used in an attempt to prove the hypothesizer wrong. You have to approach your tests with every intent to prove your own ideas wrong.
* Come up with a thought
* Come up with a way to test your thought
* Run the test.
* Did the test prove that your thought was wrong? Oh well, the end.
* Does it look like your thought may be correct? Neat! If so, then…
* Tell other people about your thought, and tell them about how you tested it, and tell them that it looked like you were correct.
* Now they can test it too! *<– This is the “universal” part*
* If someone proves your thought wrong, then…oh well! Guess you were wrong.
* If *no one* can prove that your thought was wrong, then it looks like you’ve just added something new to science! Yay!
* If someone comes along years later and discovers something new that proves you were wrong, then *still yay* because we’ve learned something new!
* Come up with a thought
* Come up with a way to test your thought
* Run the test.
* Did the test prove that your thought was wrong? Oh well, the end.
* Does it look like your thought may be correct? Neat! If so, then…
* Tell other people about your thought, and tell them about how you tested it, and tell them that it looked like you were correct.
* Now they can test it too! *<– This is the “universal” part*
* If someone proves your thought wrong, then…oh well! Guess you were wrong.
* If *no one* can prove that your thought was wrong, then it looks like you’ve just added something new to science! Yay!
* If someone comes along years later and discovers something new that proves you were wrong, then *still yay* because we’ve learned something new!
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