Talk:Scientific method/Archive 21

"The scientific method is the process by which science is carried out."

I find this sentence particularly elegant and succinct; has it been considered before as the opening sentence to the article?

The scientific method is the process by which science is carried out.^[1] It consists of a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.^[2]

pgr94 (talk) 06:10, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

• I support this idea. Perhaps the second sentence might also note that this method is also appropriate when confronting the unknown. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 06:22, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

• What do you have in mind? I understood the word "phenomenon" to be synonymous with "unexplained observation". This makes "confronting the unknown" implicit in the second sentence. I'm not sure my interpretation of the word is widespread though. :-) pgr94 (talk) 12:16, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Please see phenomenon. LeadSongDog come howl! 12:58, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I don't think my interpretation is wrong, just a narrow interpretation. Phenomenon: A fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question.. Anyway, I'm getting a bit sidetracked. pgr94 (talk) 13:19, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

• I would agree as well. :-) Sunrise (talk) 07:07, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Done. pgr94 (talk) 12:16, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

• I have reverted the change. Can anyone explain what information is added by the clause "the process by which science is carried out" that is not already present in the words "scientific method"? -hugeTim ^(talk) 00:34, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

  Perhaps I might share the mental picture that arose for me when I read the words in that sentence:

  1. 'Science', at this stage of world civilization, is a global enterprise, oceanic in scope, one of the few enterprises which exist worldwide, with a known mission, and shared values, with every nation contributing as best it can.
  2. Upon this ocean ride researchers, whose vessels are the theories, into which the respective nations have contributed resources (institutions, time, money, equipment, and people with expertise). Note that there is no implication of equality of resources. I am using Francis Bacon's image here (Novum Organum, with ships venturing in the Atlantic past the pillars of Hercules -- the portal to the unknown, fraught with difficulties).
  3. 'The process' is a globally-subscribed-to protocol of roles, whose actors play their part, to the best of their respective abilities in a division of function, like the crewmen on a vessel. Note that there is no implication that the actors on their vessels are of equal ability or talent, nor that they necessarily act in concert for the same goals; just that they know their respective parts/functions (theory, experiment, observation, data analysis, publication, etc.). (Lakatos (1976) Proofs and Refutations p.116: Teacher speaks to pupil Beta: "Beta, do not constantly heckle Epsilon! Fix your attention on what he is doing and not on how he interprets what he is doing. Go on, Epsilon." )
  4. 'Carry out': Due to its open nature, at any time, it is possible to state/know where the vessels are on this ocean, as they can advertise their progress (communicate their results, for good or ill).

  I got a distinct mental picture of the wake, or ripples from the vessel, caused by the process.

  By contrast, the phrase 'scientific method' alone suggests a garden implement, which gains meaning only from the skilled hand that holds it. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 05:48, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

My main interpretation of Ancheta's metaphor (let me know if I'm wrong) is that its significance to science may not be clear for a reader unfamiliar with the scientific method, even though it might be inferred from the term. For myself, I usually think of a student in middle or high school, which IIRC is when it is introduced in class.

Another point, which pgr's comment made me realize, is that it seems odd that the definition doesn't refer to science in some way - in fact, the word "science" is entirely absent from the lead, except in "natural science" from the OED quote. This doesn't directly argue for this specific change, but I think it would be a good way of addressing it. Sunrise (talk) 06:59, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

The article does not describe two versions of the scientific method that are currently accepted, but rather blurs the two methods into one. The two methods can be illustrated by an example.

Suppose a researcher sets out to toss a coin 100 times. The first 50 tosses are heads. The researcher then formulates the hypothesis that this coin is biased towards heads against the null hypothesis that the coin is unbiased. The researcher then continues tossing the coin for 50 more times and those last fifty tosses result in 25 heads and 25 tails. Here the two version of hypothesis testing diverge. The two methods don’t even see the same experimental outcome. The first method sees the experimental outcome as 75 heads, 25 tails and calculates the probability of this many heads or more under the null hypothesis as less that 0.05 and rejects the null hypothesis at the 5% level of statistical significance. The second method sees the outcome as 25 heads, 25 tails and calculates the probability of 25 or more heads, under the null hypothesis, to be greater than 0.05 and accepts the null hypothesis at the 5% level.

Each of the methods has been endorsed by reputable authorities as a way of scientifically testing hypotheses. These two distinct understandings of the phrase “scientific method” are not presented to the reader of the article on the scientific method although there are hints of each in the article as is illustrated by two quotations from the article: For the first method, “Not all steps take place in every scientific inquiry (or to the same degree), and are not always in the same order.” ; For the second method, “It is essential that the outcome of testing such a prediction be currently unknown.”

The two methods use the same terminology, but they are not the same idea. An article on the scientific method shouldn’t fail to describe them both and cite their authoritative endorsements.Gjsis (talk) 13:52, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

See the top section of this talk page for the argument that there are multiple methods.

There was a shift in logic between the two camps you described: the 1st camp altered the population after the first experiment, the 2nd camp defined the second population as a new series. I suppose the writeup would have to admit this. Can you give citations on the respective reputable authorities? I can't believe they wouldn't state their standards of accounting. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:14, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

First to the authoritative endorsements. The first method, including old data, is a partially retrospective statistical analysis, and most meta-analyses employ data known before the hypotheses were specified. The most famous such analysis was published by the USEPA in 1992 on environmental tobacco smoke and it has been accepted as sound. Also, prestigious journals such as New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association have published such partially retrospective studies as a Google search will show. The second method is recommended by Francis Bacon in Aphorism 106 in the Novum Organum where he says that hypotheses must be tested by new data after the specification of the hypotheses.

Besides endorsements there are also negative views of the first method. Already mentioned is Bacon’s requirement that the test be based on new data. George Boole takes the position that probabilities, except for zero and one, require uncertainty. As the first 50 tosses were in the known past when the hypotheses were specified, the probability of those 50 heads is 1.0 and not the fiftieth power of 1/2. With Boole's correction the calculation in the first method gives the same result as was found in the second method. The Boole reference is from the Laws of Thought, chapter XVI.Gjsis (talk) 13:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Does the Scientific Method and Religion section really belong in this article? It seems to be more about religion and its relation to science in general and not specific to scientific method. pgr94 (talk) 13:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the topic belongs on a subpage? 13:34, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

As the article states, Charles Sanders Peirce has identified doubt as the primary initiator for scientific method; 900 years before him, Alhazen harbored doubts about Claudius Ptolemy's work, in part from his knowledge that mankind was not free from error. This instigated Alhazen's amazing range of investigations, from geometry and brain dissections, to optics and scientific method. Alhazen, at least, disclosed his religious motivation for his enormous range of investigation. One could argue that Ijtihad was the motivator. But I think it is fairly clear that the details of the individual's religions/ cultures had little effect on the methods or the results of the respective individual investigations. Imre Lakatos stated clearly that "In short: ideological interference leads to bad science" (p.7 Brendan Larvor (1998) Lakatos: an introduction ISBN 4-415-14276-8 {{isbn}}: Check isbn value: checksum (help)) --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:54, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I wholly agree that the section about religion has no place within this article. The discussion primarily evolves about A priori knowledge as a means of Acquiring knowledge, which is an epistemic question. I would vote to move this section to Relationship between religion and science. Timelezz (talk) 15:22, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

I am not knowledgeable about this area so perhaps someone else should trim this section. I will probably be quite heavy-handed to redress the undue weight. pgr94 (talk) 09:53, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I would say to go ahead. :-) Probably what remains afterwards should be merged into the history section. Sunrise (talk) 05:06, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I propose we put a link to a subpage, scientific method and religion in a footnote to 'the method of tenacity' in the Charles Sanders Peirce section, and that we move the section in its entirety to the target subpage. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:12, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Nicely done! pgr94 (talk) 20:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Latecomer to this discussion. I originally added the material tocorrect some biased pro-Christian material recently added to the article. The move is fine, but hopefully the old stuff doesn't creep back in. I think the new material IS relevant to scientific METHOD insofar as the actual ORIGINS of scientific method are being discussed. Thanks all.--WickerGuy (talk) 03:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

The "Scientific burden of evidence" search term redirects here, but the terms themselves cannot be found anywhere in the article. Since it redirects to here, it would be good if those words could appear in context in this article so that the user isn't lost having to read the entire article. 126.65.228.104 (talk) 12:37, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Or simply remove the redirect. --ChrisSteinbach (talk) 14:22, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

 Done. It now redirects to another, hopefully happier home. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 18:33, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke, as editors, we are painfully aware of how little we know, and this is reflected in the current article. Even the most 'advanced' sciences are held hostage by our human needs. True, we seek understanding, as part of the mission of the encyclopedia. Even the tiniest details of a situation still affect our understanding and acceptance of the most basic needs, such as for peace and order. These needs become the province of psychology, art, history, and beyond. Items which transcend physics, as you so passionately describe above.

And yet, there is a science which we are beginning to apply to this. I refer you to the insula, an obscure part of our brains, which appears to control the passions, and even the presence or abscence of consciousness, via the claustrum, which was the last topic studied by Francis Crick, up to his dying day. He was not alone in this search; Antonio Damasio was one of the scientists he consulted.

As User:Myrvin points out, hypothesis and theory are intertwined, so the stages of the formulation you describe above, involve the sorting out of what we know and don't know. Stating what we know and don't know is the province of this article. At the very least, a good method will allow us to state hypothesis and theory, to compare what we think we know to what should (in both senses, both prescriptive and descriptive) happen. After we compare what did happen to what should happen, we can make progress in our understanding of a situation. (I deliberately echo Damasio, The Feeling of What Happenspp35-81, pp335-344.) @SteveMcCluskey, I propose we use this approach to solving the problem of the definite article in the scientific method, for what it's worth. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 19:59, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Good point. With "(accepted) facts", I really meant "theories", theories being the actual "facts" of science, not unfiltered empirical data. Massimo Pigliucci makes an important point here with the Duhem–Quine thesis. Hypotheses are all interwoven; the more tests a hypothesis has already survived, the more reluctant scientists are to throw it out when apparent counterevidence appears – compare the OPERA neutrino anomaly. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:49, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

The Illustris project demonstrates that reliance on models alone is one-sided. Data is also necessary; the "Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation" (May 8, 2013) Nature shows this. I propose altering the article to improve the current statement on computational modeling, which currently relies only on a utility function. Currently the largest supercomputers of the world were needed to run the simulation, for months, in order to produce a 6 minute video.

Would it be useful to enumerate the current errors of the simulation model to illustrate this one-sidedness? --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 18:11, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

There is not just one single method that could be called the scientific method. The method presented here is the experimental method, which is not only not generally followed by the social sciences and the humanities, which tend to use the comparative method instead (and are mostly not math-heavy), but not even all of the natural sciences! Purely observational and historical sciences clearly cannot design experiments (in the conventional sense at least) in most cases (although sometimes there are experimental offshoots, such as experimental archaeology). Experiments are not the only way to test hypotheses. Computer simulations are now increasingly possible, but these are still not really experiments and in any case were not possible earlier. Still, nobody would deny the scientificness of astronomy, geology, paleontology, paleoclimatology and various other paleosciences, or would they?

When a newly proposed hypothesis happens to be consistent with everything known and possibly even evidence and knowledge found and established only afterwards (which would serve as confirmation), the hypothesis may be considered as having passed all tests and may be accepted as preliminary explanation. (After all, all hypotheses have implications that serve as touchstones.) The more relevant evidence and knowledge available, the more secure the hypothesis.

I think this is the real heart of the method of science: devising explanations that are consistent with everything we know about the world, i. e., explanations that are possible and plausible. For example, a scientist could hypothesise about the properties of a distant extrasolar planet tens of light-years ago in order to explain puzzling observations relating to this planet. There is currently no way to test the hypothesis, but there may be in the future ways to learn more about the planet through more precise observations. Therefore at the present time the hypothesis can only be considered possible as long as it does not contradict anything we know about the universe, but otherwise quite uncertain.

To sum up, a better characterisation of scientific method is probably:

1. Observe and collect data
2. Determine facts in need of explanation (not necessary if already determined)
3. Propose an explanation (not necessary if there is already one); if you can't think of one, go back to step 1
4. Compare the explanation against the known (accepted/established) facts (i. e., test it)
5. If there is a contradiction, go back to step 3, else to step 1. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:24, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

• A couple of immediate thoughts/queries:

  (i) Should steps 1 to 3 have a fixed order?

  (ii) Step 4 starts to sound experimental... ("test it"...)

Regards, Sardanaphalus (talk) 23:15, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke, @Sardanaphalus,

as you note, our resident geologist makes this same point about geology; in his view, geology is based on thermodynamics, and the geological analog of experimental discovery is observation of a posited, but currently not-yet-known, geological formation. Thus there is a step 0 in Florian Blaschke's formulation which corresponds to the characterization of geology as thermodynamic. The article does state clearly that steps 1 to 3 do not have a fixed order.

I personally happen to agree with the statement that there is no single method; 'the scientific method' was a perennial topic which is saved as the first section of this talk page. If there were now a consensus to revert the occurences of the, I would support it personally. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 17:09, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@Sardanaphalus,

(i) Not necessarily. As is well-known, in practice, science does not proceed in a neat, orderly manner and neither purely inductively nor purely deductively.

(ii) I've already explained that in the running text above. Experiments are not the only way to test hypotheses. Testing hypotheses, in a more general sense, means checking them against all available knowledge.

In principle, I can simply propose a hypothetical explanation for a phenomenon in need of explanation and leave the task of checking it against the known facts about reality to the scientific/academic community at large; it's just not very wise to be so lazy, and usually you will want to ascertain the plausibility of your explanation to a reasonable degree yourself to spare yourself embarrassment. After all, most ideas are easy to shoot down. Also, of course, publishing a paper in a high-impact magazine requires you to do at least some preliminary testing of your hypothesis (and the editorial and peer review process will eliminate weak, easily shot down ideas, so these won't make it into the journal in the first place – so that such ideas must find other outlets such as the Internet or non-specialist publications, if the proposer is not willing to abandon them, although this is the road to crankdom and pseudoscience). Any responsible, self-respecting and prudent scientist won't waste their colleagues' and their own time by raising any raw, spontaneous idea or hunch publicly, at least not formally (chatting and brainstorming with colleagues is already a filtering process). After all, the most noble thing to do for a scientist is to disprove their own hypotheses instead of leaving it to others.

Perhaps a better expression is vetting, not testing. Examination in general. Filtering. The "selection" part of the Darwinist process of scientific discovery.

Moreover, of course, by far most ideas (i. e., virtually all ideas) you will come up with are not even original. It is already implicit that scientists ensure that hypotheses they propose are innovative (although resurrecting abandoned, neglected or forgotten hypotheses is also completely permissible, and the attempt to identify precursors is strongly encouraged), because non-original hypotheses tend to be already disproven – the less original, the more discussed they tend to be, and hence the more counterarguments and counterevidence tends to exist (although there may be problems with these). So when a hypothesis is being proposed, it is expected that the hypothesis is reasonably innovative and certainly not some old hat. But ultimately that is only a consequence of the selection process, as explained. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:51, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I generally concur with Ancheta Wis that there is no single scientific method and we should avoid using the definite article "the" in discussing scientific methods. Looked at historically, there have been many scientific methods, so claiming there is a single scientific method not only ignores the differences among scientific specialties but also the different methods employed in different times and cultures. Claims for a single scientific method tend to arise in philosophical or pedagogical discussions that tend to emphasize how science should be practiced more than how it actually is practiced.

Perhaps it would be useful to place a discussion of the problematic nature of such claims for a single scientific method somewhere near the beginning of this article. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 22:15, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

That's probably due to the heavy physics-bias of this article. It is really incredibly insular and provincial. Even other pure natural sciences like the geo- and paleosciences are neglected and astronomy is barely represented. Even planetary science and planetary geology are poorly served by the orthodox concept presented here. Physics, chemistry, biology – excluding biological paleosciences – and medicine are far from forming the entirely of science. I can understand that, for example, studies of human culture, especially literature and the arts, or to some extent religions, etc. (although, for example, musicology ranges from highly subjectively coloured approaches to very natural-science-centred, experimental fields, much like linguistics), will necessarily be of marginal relevance to this article at best, relying as they do on a strongly hermeneutical approach, which is also true of historical-cultural-ethnological-sociological sciences and even archaeology to an extent, and which is far less compatible with the ethos of natural science (after all, the definition given does acknowledge that the method is only really concerned with natural science), but the myopic focus on a narrow subset of natural sciences is inexcusable.

At the very least, it should be acknowledged in the text that the orthodox model of experimental science must be modified in many other fields, and terms such as "prediction" or "experiment" must be interpreted in a looser sense rather than in the literal form usual in synchronic natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. The introduction is still compatible with a more general reading, although only by virtue of a lack of explicitness, not by directly addressing the issue of the variety of sciences, but the remainder of the article is in full orthodox physics-centric mode. This myopia may be to some extent due to a feature of the literature, but it is still jarring. It should be possible to expand the perspective of the article, correcting the flaw of the literature to equate scientific method with the experimental method and to define it as applying only to natural sciences, despite the fact that the term is scientific method and not natural scientific method, which would be more honest, although still not quite correct – alas, you cannot move continents or breed Velociraptors in the lab, let alone complete alien star systems, planets and ecosystems.

Wikipedia should not help propagating the prejudiced idea that, despite the undeniable fact that prototypical science takes place in a lab and involves lots of complicated technology and math, only natural science is science and fields of study such as ethnomusicology, paleography and library science are but idle speculation and little more than eccentric hobbies of ivory-tower pointy-heads bent on wasting taxpayers' hard-earned money. After all, Wikipedia covers the results of this kind of research as well, often to the delight and remarkably keen interest of the same people who sneer at the "mushy liberal arts", probably because they fail to realise that they involve rigour and a lot of work too. Good that at least the mathematicians are absolved of this kind of insinuation, given that they can always go "Hey, you don't know what it might be good for one day!" --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps, in time, "the scientific method" will be replaced by "a scientific approach" or something similar. Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:09, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I have studied the history and philosophy of science for many years and would strongly recommend the inclusion of the introductory book by Hugh G. Gauch Jr., Scientific Method in Brief, Camb. Univ. Press, 2012. AMJJ (talk) 14:59, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It appears that the newer Gauch book has new content, or is it pithier content? We especially need good secondary sources; apparently Gauch 2012 qualifies? His earlier commentary that character matters is a primary source. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 15:36, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Gauch 2012 would become, almost certainly, the clearly most neutral and highest quality of secondary sources on scientific method in the "Further reading" list. In the 2012 book Gauch makes no argument about character, as far as I found (having carefully read circa 90% of the text). I have not read the 2003 book yet, which is considerably longer and therefore a more challenging introductory text for article readers hoping to begin learning scientific method.AMJJ (talk) 13:09, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. Some of the items that Gauch 2003 mentions in passing, such as the teaching of scientific method in a master/apprentice relationship (he shows a picture of Aristotle, the boy, being taught by Plato, the master) are actually crucial to the article. Is that in Gauch 2012? I am interested in secondary sources since there are so few. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:04, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

The testing section could use more clarity. One of the big thrusts of the anti-science moment is to attempt to claim that anything beyond a controlled-laboratory-experiment is not legitimate science. The current section does include an example that an astronomical observation is an example of "testing" a theory. However I think the section as a whole needs to be more clear that natural-observations are a standard form of scientific testing. Geology, cosmology, paleontology, even physics is often based on observations that cannot be replicated in a laboratory experiment. They are all observational experiments testing the predictions of theories. Alsee (talk) 18:12, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

This is a question for @User:SteveMcCluskey: in (A. Mark Smith (2001), Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen's De Aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn Al-Haytham's Kitab Al-Manazir , Volumes 1-2 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 91 part 5, ISBN 0-87169-914-1 ISSN 0065-9746) click on 'notes to book one' to get to page 410 (notes for footnote 99), it appears that Mark Smith's commentary satisfies the Wikipedia criterion of 'secondary source' for the following hypothesis: 'in the visual system for man, image fusion takes place in the optic chiasm'. This hypothesis was voiced by Galen (129-216 CE), who follows Claudius Ptolemy (90-268 CE). Alhazen (965-1040) also follows and criticizes Ptolemy. That makes Alhazen a secondary source for Galen's hypothesis, as cited by Mark Smith, irrespective of the status of Kitab al manazir. True?

Now in Book of Optics Alhazen dissects a brain and shows the optic chiasm (picture showing the X-shape from a Turkish manuscript), about 800 years after Galen, who lived 1800 years ago. Thus Galen's hypothesis was in play 1000 years ago. It goes without saying that we know much more about the visual system now and Galen's hypothesis is incomplete.

Alhacen (c.1020), section 6.69, De Aspectibus pp.376-7 of the critical edition (A.Mark Smith, ed. 2001 Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception ISBN 0-87169-914-1) is the text for the commentary on p.410 by A. Mark Smith (2001) footnote 99. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 12:30, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

@Ancheta Wis: Looking through the texts you cited, I can find no evidence that Alhacen himself attributed image fusion at the optic chiasm to Galen. Smith in his footnote 21 at p. 397 and footnote 99 at p. 410 clearly attributes this idea to Galen, and infers that Alhacen may have got it from Galen (or perhaps indirectly from Ptolemy). However, I don't see Alhacen explicitly citing Galen as a source at either of the texts (p. 348 and pp. 376-7) corresponding to footnotes 21 and 99. That's not too surprising; citations of authorities were not that common among early writers. As close Alhacen comes to saying the idea is derived from someone else is with the "it is said" on p. 348 (see also Smith's note 21 at p. 397).

The bottom line is that we could cite Smith as a secondary source on the views of Galen, Ptolemy, or even Alhacen, but Alhacen isn't a secondary source for either Galen or Ptolemy. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:46, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I appreciate your historiography. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:03, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

The recent edit by @Historian7 appears to be at least partially cut and pasted from other sources. I suggest that Historian7 revert this recent edit. Looking after things, Grandma (talk) 21:43, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

See discussion at User talk:I'm your Grandma. Grandma (talk) 00:07, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

At User talk:I'm your Grandma. I am informed that World Heritage Encyclopedia actually copies articles from Wikipedia. My seeing similarities between WHE and W caused me to make inferences that were not true, and I have apologized to Historian7. Grandma (talk) 01:45, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

This edit request to Scientific method has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change 3rd paragraph first sentence from: "The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations agree with or conflict with the predictions derived from an hypothesis." To: "The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations agree with or conflict with the predictions derived from a hypothesis." Because: The article AN is used before singular, countable nouns which begin with vowel sounds. Nikzilla3 (talk) 19:29, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Done thanks for the eye Cannolis (talk) 19:58, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

The “Experiments can be conducted in a college lab, on a kitchen table, at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, at the bottom of an ocean, on Mars, and so on…” section is lengthy (rather than funny, from my view) and may better be shortened to “Experiments can be conducted anywhere,” if it is at all relevant to mention. Proposing instead of simply editing for it’s _so_ lengthy, it seems someone might have fallen in love with this wording. ;) – j9t (talk) 16:36, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

@j9t, Be bold. You can use the talk page or wait further, if you are more comfortable with that. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 20:40, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It occurs to me that prudent investigators marshal their resources during a scientific experiment, or otherwise envision the consequences of their experiments, in a thought experiment, before starting a chain of unfortunate events. But a wikipedia edit is almost free of consequence, so my first reply is still apropos. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 20:48, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The pertinent point of an experiment is to distinguish 'What is known?' from 'What is not known?'. Thus during the Surveyor program in the 'sixties, 'What is not known?' was 'How deep is the dust on the Moon?'. Thus the robotic expeditions, as part of the serious science to get a man on the Moon in the 'sixties. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 22:44, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

A point usually omitted regarding the scientific method is that it is not possible to "prove" a theory. The best that can be said is that a theory has not yet been shown to be false! Observers continue to build a body of experiments which fail to disprove the theory so that with many such experiments, workers come to believe in its correctness. Paul Carver (talk) 15:08, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

The article says: "That is, no theory can ever be considered final, since new problematic evidence might be discovered." Myrvin (talk) 18:22, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Currently the History section states: "In the 7th century BCE, Daniel, a Jewish captive of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, conducted a scientific experiment complete with a hypothesis, a control group, a treatment group, and a conclusion. The control group partook of the king's delicacies and wine, whereas Daniel's test group limited themselves to vegetables and water. At the end of the test, Daniel's hypothesis was proven true."

The Reference is the Bible. If the Bible is a valid reference for the Scientific Method, then... (need I reference the Inquisition's decision regarding Galileo?). To the point, scholarly consensus considers the Book of Daniel pseudonymous, the stories of the first half legendary in origin, and the visions of the second the product of anonymous authors in the Maccabean period (2nd century BCE). Reference: Collins, John J. (2002). "Current Issues in the Study of Daniel". In Collins, John J.; Flint, Peter W.; VanEpps, Cameron. The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception. BRILL. p.2

Further, I've never heard of either a scientist or christian group claiming this was a scientific experiment proving that vegetarianism will make people ten times better than other people (from the Biblical tale). This OR needs to go. Entrepic (talk) 08:07, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

wp:5p (read the whole page first!) has proven to be a reliable guide for us, the editors of this page. I find inline tags e.g.^{[anachronism]} to be the most precise mechanism. Use this talk page, and be patient. My personal approach has been wp:agf, but the encyclopedia is huge, and may surprise you. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 11:08, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, it's already been tagged for a while, so I've gone ahead and taken it out. Thanks for pointing that out. :-) Sunrise (talk) 18:02, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

1) Explain the process of the scientific method? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.78.36.67 (talk) 18:40, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

The fact that you know that you don't know yet is the first step. Being honest with yourself is real progress.

Take your time; guess; say it in words; write down your guess (what you think should happen next); try things out. Did what you expect to happen, in fact happen? Did you see it happen? Write down what you did, and what happened next.

See scientific method#Overview for a short description of what you just did. Take little notes on a little card; ask a friend to help you, if you need to know more about your notes. Ask yourself what you know now. Help each other by telling each other what you know already.

Read the article again. Repeat these steps.--Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 22:58, 20 March 2015 (UTC)