Science is a very different process to the one taught in high schools. As I've written before, it has a lot more similarities to the humanities and particularly the arts than is often appreciated. Yes, it deals in hard facts. But the interpretation of those facts, when it comes to front-line research, is every bit as subjective as the beauty of a Shakespearean sonnet.
The difference is that science makes testable predictions, and it has that all-important "reject hypothesis" scenario. This is no small difference - but the similarities matter too. It's not a black-and-white case of "scientists baffled" versus "mystery solved", whatever the popular media might say. Which matters a great deal, because if you see scientists continually getting things wrong without understanding why that that's integral to the process, of course you'll see them as untrustworthy idiots. Getting children to do experiments is one thing. Getting them to understand that there might not actually be a right answer at all - just the best answer that's possible given the available data - is quite another.
Thinking about this some more, I think the major deficiencies of this version is that it lacks the extreme cases. You can prove a theory, occasionally. You can also disprove one - nowhere near as easily as a hypothesis, but it can be done.
Fifty Shades Of Science
The scientific method taught in schools is something like this : This is much too simple unless you're 12 and trying to make a lemon-powered clock or something. The internet throws up lots of variations on this theme, some of which are better than others.
The "It's been done" stage is annoyingly common in computer science...
ReplyDeleteFor me, the "Results mean something, but they don't mean what I thought they would be mean" is almost a default. Hypothesis testing in observational astronomy is almost a non sequitur. I would now be more surprised if the results indicated anything about the original idea than if they didn't.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe that's just my excuse not to write observing proposals...
A couple of nights ago I got up with a great idea and toddled off toward the the laptop to record it. Halfway to the living room, I realized where the weakness was and turned back toward the bed. :(
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked my graphic, and even more glad that you expanded on it! My friend said that you forgot to add the "FUCK FUCK FUCK" part of it, though. :)
ReplyDeleteI shared it on aSE just now. Also- I love that you used so many cats!
Where is the drudgery of writing?
ReplyDeleteDan Broadbent Thanks for resharing ! Much appreciated. Yes, I love cats. And there's a cat meme for just about everything, which helps.
ReplyDeleteI saw on aSE facebook (I'm not on Facebook, never have never will be so I can't comment) :
"The arrow from the dinosaur (hypothesis) should be pointing to the old woman (observation), not the other way around. Or at least the arrow should come from the cat (experiment). Because it looks as if "Observation" is the start of the scientific method which yields results for peer review."
Actually I had a serious point to make with that - it was one of the main reasons I wanted to expand your original. Edited from the blog :
"_Many results also come out of large surveys where the result was utterly unknowable before the survey began - it couldn't have even been specified as a goal, because there were too many unknown unknowns. So you don't necessarily do an observation to test a hypothesis at all.
Many scientists do a little of everything at some point in their careers, but often with a strong bias in one direction or another. Some observers are happy to do nothing but examine and catalogue, rarely constructing hypothesis or mathematical models... Which means that we don't always have to go through every step in the chart. Sometimes we can just do : observe -> interpret -> publish, and that "interpret" stage can even be kept to a bare minimum. That's a perfectly valid way of doing science, every bit as much as the idea of hypothesis testing is. Coming up with an idea to explain things is great, but it's not the be-all and end-all of the scientific method.
Bob Calder Ah, well that would part of the academic method, which I may or may not explore in a future post depending on how depressed I want to get.
ReplyDeleteI have a stick figure T-shirt with the stages of thesis - depression, procrastination, drudgery...
ReplyDelete