How Does Science Work?

Understanding the Scientific Method

Jul 12, 2009 Dennis Holley

Investigative science should be viewed as a cyclic, not linear endeavor.

While the working of science (or the scientific method as it is often known) is often taught and learned as a linear series of steps, it is more accurate to visualize science as a circular enterprise – the science cycle.

Riding the Science Cycle

Visualize a wheel. At the hub of the wheel is curiosity. Forming the wheel and circling around the hub are: Questions, Observation, Hypothesis, Experimentation, Conclusion, Communication, and Modification. Science is never-ending so the wheel (science cycle) constantly turns.

  • Curiosity: Science begins and ends with curiosity. Curiosity is the fuel that drives the science machine and the central hub around which the science cycle spins. Without curiosity, humankind would not be driven to divine the truths of the universe.

I have no special gifts. I am only passionately curious.

Albert Einstein

  • Questions: Curiosity raises questions and questions present problems to be solved.

The questions worth asking, in other words, come not

from other people but from nature, and are, for the

most part, delicate things easily drowned out

by the noise of everyday life

Robert B. Laughlin

Scientists Must be Careful in Making Observations

  • Observation: Humans are not born accurate observers. People have certain prejudices and preconceptions about how they perceive the world around them, especially as they grow older. Because of these prejudices, scientists and even the common person must strive to separate reality (the way things actually are) from inference (the way we think things are or the way we want or expect things to be) in any situation in which observation plays a role.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen

but then thinking what nobody else has thought.

Albert Szent-Gyorgi

  • Hypothesis and Prediction: Curiosity raises questions. Accurate observations reveal information. This information is used to suggest explanations and answers to our questions through hypotheses.

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes.

It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is

a novel suggestion that no one want to believe.

It is guilty until proven effective.

Edward Teller

  • A prediction is a statement made in advance that states the results that will be obtained from testing a hypothesis. Scientists make predictions because predictions provide a way to test the validity of the hypothesis. If an experiment yields results inconsistent with the prediction, the hypothesis must be modified or rejected. If experimental results support the prediction, the hypothesis in turn is supported.

  • Experimentation/Test With the realization that speculation and prediction must be tested in controlled experiments, modern science was born.
Experiments are done to test hypotheses,

not to confirm them; there is a fundamental

difference between the two goals.

E. Bright Wilson, Jr.

  • Conclusion: What do the data gathered from controlled experiments mean? What conclusions (answers) may be drawn from the data? Things are not always clear cut. “Muddy data” can lead to “cloudy conclusions.” The validity of any scientific conclusion rests squarely on the accuracy of the data and the interpretation of that data.

The great tragedy of science — the slaying of

a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Richard P. Feynman

  • Communication: After performing a series of experiments that support the hypothesis, there comes a point at which the scientist must communicate and throw his or her work into the bright light of scientific scrutiny. This communication usually comes in the form of a written paper describing the experiment and its results. The paper is then submitted for publication in a recognized academic journal. However, before it is published, the paper is subjected to a process known as peer review in which the work is subjected to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the field. The process of peer review is the cornerstone of the self-correcting nature of the scientific endeavor.

  • Modify or Trash: If contradictions arise, a hypothesis should be modified to account for challenges to its validity. However, if modification to the old hypothesis cannot bring it within the bounds of more recent findings and results, it must be trashed. In science one must be comfortable with failure for failure, not success, is the norm. Actually, more is learned from being wrong than from being right because a wrong hypothesis opens up even more experimental pathways as scientists attempt to understand why their predictions were incorrect.
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce

One cannot underestimate the power of insight, intuition, and imagination in the turning of the science cycle. It is because these qualities play such a large role in scientific progress that some scientists are so much better at science than others, just as some composers, artists, and athletes are better at their craft than are others.

The copyright of the article How Does Science Work? in Scientific Inquiry is owned by Dennis Holley. Permission to republish How Does Science Work? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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