How are the scientific method, free market, and natural selection related?
Read Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog post to find out. I particularly like this paragraph:
In science, the most relevant restriction is that we can’t just randomly generate hypotheses because we wouldn’t be able to test and evaluate them all. This is why science heavily relies on education standards, peer review, and requires new hypotheses to tightly fit into existing knowledge. We also need guidelines for good scientific conduct, reproducibility, and a mechanism to give credits to scientists with successful ideas. Take away any of that and the system wouldn’t work.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-scientific-method-is-not-myth.html
I write to try to undo the hype in a new scientific findings where a newspaper has lathered on too much hype. I also moderate the Science on Google+ community. So I often get comments about how we should question everything, that science is about challenging everything. If you don’t question everything, e.g., evolution, climate change, etc. then you aren’t doing science. Sadly, these comments often come from climate change deniers, believers in pseudoscience or conspiracies. So I often have to explain that skepticism is fine, however, when you have an extraordinary claim, you need extraordinary evidence. I’ve written about that before.
Skepticism doesn’t equal question all things
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Scienceongoogleplus/posts/dTJssSxdALH
I’m not sure many people truly understand the scientific method and IFLS doesn’t help with catchy GIFs with no science or attribution.
Science is not about certainty. Science is about finding the most reliable way of thinking, at the present level of knowledge. Science is extremely reliable; it’s not certain. In fact, not only it’s not certain, but it’s the lack of certainty that grounds it. Scientific ideas are credible not because they are sure, but because they are the ones that have survived all the possible past critiques, and they are the most credible because they were put on the table for everybody’s criticism. […]
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/neotsn/4947989561
#ScienceSunday
h/t Filippo Salustri
March 27, 2016
Good write up, thanks Chad Haney.
March 27, 2016
Thanks Gary Ray R, I’m sure you sympathize with my comment about people saying science = skepticism.
March 27, 2016
This is fascinating because this also neatly explains why science can go down initial rabbit holes before correcting course:
In science, the most relevant restriction is that we can’t just randomly generate hypotheses because we wouldn’t be able to test and evaluate them all. This is why science heavily relies on education standards, peer review, and requires new hypotheses to tightly fit into existing knowledge.
In other words, we choose which hypothesis to work on first. All the listed factors hopefully reduce the bias in the selection, but inevitably which questions we choose to investigate color the rest of it. If the choice is good, it turns out to be particularly productive. If it is not, sometimes we can correct course easily but other times (particularly if the “we” challenging the initial hypotheses include scientists against whom there’s other bias, such as women), it can take a lot of work to reverse or correct an accepted hypothesis.
Thanks for the article, it’s a really well written one.
March 27, 2016
Cindy Brown, I thought it was a new and interesting way to look at the scientific method.
March 27, 2016
Gah, I forgot the link to Sabine’s blog.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-scientific-method-is-not-myth.html
March 27, 2016
Babygirl S.B. I’m sorry, what?
March 27, 2016
I just have no understanding of the point of your question, that’s all.
March 27, 2016
Babygirl S.B., I also can’t follow your comment/question.
March 28, 2016
Questioning the science should mean if something doesn’t look right to you, you look up the peer reviewed studies, and see what the science actually says.
March 28, 2016
Rugger Ducky, unless you believe in conspiracies. 😉
March 28, 2016
I believe relativity gravity= evolution infinity. Thus completing the positive and negative such as an atom, birth of a star or super nova. Based on the vortex/black hole.
March 28, 2016
4. Perform Experiments…not all the time, better: 4. Perform Experiments or Make Observations (within an observational design) o Look for Big Data (using Informatics)
March 29, 2016
Denny Fernandez del Viso, see step 1. It’s a feedback loop.
March 29, 2016
I’m curious, how many people who have commented here have read the text and Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog post?
May 31, 2016
Gt
June 3, 2016
That encourages people unfamiliar with research to accept any study as conclusive. We have way too much of that going on. Need to rename that last step.
June 3, 2016
Parker Ashurst, a well written conclusion always suggest future work. What would you suggest in place of ‘conclusion’?
June 4, 2016
Chad Haney, how about “assessment” or “evaluation”? How aabout including peer review and repetition as part of the Method? Another solution is adding basic science to a reprise of a required civics class in high school. It would not hurt to review the basic science segment in teacher training. There is an awful lot of work to be done in this area.
June 5, 2016
Sum to the Big Bang theory.