Thanks Glenn
Horse
On 9 Jan 2001, at 1:25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Horse and MDers,
>
> HORSE:
> Maybe I missed it in your post but could you state exactly what it is YOU
> mean by the
> Scientific Method. That might seem odd but I'm sure there are a number of
> people who will
> otherwise be confused.
>
> OK. What I mean by the scientific method is the conventional definition.
> The method is a simple, iterative procedure that leads people to understand
> how a phenomena in nature works. It does this by successively eliminating
> wrong ideas about how the phenomena works until a promising idea is found,
> at which point the method is used to refine the promising idea even
> further. The promising idea will be called a theory.
>
> The method starts by making a guess of how the phenomena works, which is
> what the fancy word "hypothesis" means.
>
> 1. Make a hypothesis
>
> Then you devise an experiment that will prove your hypothesis wrong if the
> experiment turns out a certain way. If you cannot think of a way to devise
> such an experiment, your hypothesis might be right or wrong, but you'll
> never be too sure one way or the other. Such a hypothesis might be outside
> the bounds of science and fall under philosophy or religion, or just be
> technically infeasible.
>
> 2. Devise an experiment to test the hypothesis
> 3. Run the experiment
>
> If the experiment falsifies the hypothesis (proves it wrong), you go back
> to #1 and think up a new hypothesis or adjust your current one in some way
> and re-devise, retest, etc.
>
> If your experiment cannot disprove the hypothesis, then it has promise,
> but it's far from certain. A careful investigator will rerun the
> experiment many times to ensure it is not a fluke. If it still holds up,
> parameters of this experiment are changed, but only one at a time, and
> these are tested to see the effect they have on the phenomena. Examples of
> parameters might be pressure, speed, temperature, volume, or time. You
> find that the phenomena is sensitive to certain parameters, and not others.
> Eventually a pretty good picture emerges of how the phenomena works.
>
> An important part of science, but not the scientific method per se, is
> that investigators publish their results along with a description of the
> experiments that led them to these results. This allows other scientists
> the opportunity to run the experiments themselves and either verify or
> discredit the conclusions. For example, the claims about cold fusion back
> in the 1980s were discredited this way.
>
> Glenn
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