Scientific method Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Scientific integrity== {{Main|Scientific integrity}} ===Confirmation<!--Linked from [[Confirmation (disambiguation)]]-->=== {{Main|Reproducibility}} Science is a social enterprise, and scientific work tends to be accepted by the scientific community when it has been confirmed. Crucially, experimental and theoretical results must be reproduced by others within the scientific community. Researchers have given their lives for this vision; [[Georg Wilhelm Richmann]] was killed by [[ball lightning]] (1753) when attempting to replicate the 1752 kite-flying experiment of [[Benjamin Franklin]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Krider |first=E. Philip |date=Jan 2006 |title=Benjamin Franklin and lightning rods |journal=Physics Today |volume=59 |issue=1 |page=42 |doi=10.1063/1.2180176 |bibcode=2006PhT....59a..42K |s2cid=110623159 |quote=On 6 August 1753, the Swedish scientist Georg Wilhelm Richmann was electrocuted in St. Petersburg ...|doi-access=free }}</ref> {{anchor|Evaluation and improvement}}If an experiment cannot be [[Reproducibility|repeated]] to produce the same results, this implies that the original results might have been in error. As a result, it is common for a single experiment to be performed multiple times, especially when there are uncontrolled variables or other indications of [[Observational error|experimental error]]. For significant or surprising results, other scientists may also attempt to replicate the results for themselves, especially if those results would be important to their own work.<ref>{{cite web |title=Reconstruction of Galileo Galilei's experiment – the inclined plane |url=http://www.fyysika.ee/vorgustik/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Reconstruction-of-Galileo-Galilei.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140429075745/http://www.fyysika.ee/vorgustik/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Reconstruction-of-Galileo-Galilei.pdf |archive-date=2014-04-29 |access-date=2014-04-28}}</ref> Replication has become a contentious issue in social and biomedical science where treatments are administered to groups of individuals. Typically an ''experimental group'' gets the treatment, such as a drug, and the ''control group'' gets a placebo. [[John Ioannidis]] in 2005 pointed out that the method being used has led to many findings that cannot be replicated.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ioannidis |first=John P. A. |date=August 2005 |title=Why most published research findings are false |journal=[[PLOS Medicine]] |volume=2 |issue=8 |pages=e124 |doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 |pmc=1182327 |pmid=16060722 |doi-access=free}}</ref> The process of [[peer review]] involves the evaluation of the experiment by experts, who typically give their opinions anonymously. Some journals request that the experimenter provide lists of possible peer reviewers, especially if the field is highly specialized. Peer review does not certify the correctness of the results, only that, in the opinion of the reviewer, the experiments themselves were sound (based on the description supplied by the experimenter). If the work passes peer review, which occasionally may require new experiments requested by the reviewers, it will be published in a peer-reviewed [[Academic journal|scientific journal]]. The specific journal that publishes the results indicates the perceived quality of the work.{{efn-lg|In ''Two New Sciences'', there are three 'reviewers': Simplicio, Sagredo, and Salviati, who serve as foil, antagonist, and protagonist. Galileo speaks for himself only briefly. But Einstein's 1905 papers were not peer-reviewed before their publication.}} Scientists typically are careful in recording their data, a requirement promoted by [[Ludwik Fleck]] (1896–1961) and others.{{sfnp|Fleck|1979|pp=xxvii–xxviii}} Though not typically required, they might be requested to [[Data sharing|supply this data]] to other scientists who wish to replicate their original results (or parts of their original results), extending to the sharing of any experimental samples that may be difficult to obtain.<ref>"[http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/data_sharing/index.htm NIH Data Sharing Policy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120513171213/http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/data_sharing/index.htm|date=2012-05-13}}."</ref> To protect against bad science and fraudulent data, government research-granting agencies such as the [[National Science Foundation]], and science journals, including ''Nature'' and ''Science'', have a policy that researchers must archive their data and methods so that other researchers can test the data and methods and build on the research that has gone before. [[Scientific data archiving]] can be done at several national archives in the U.S. or the [[World Data Center]]. ===Beliefs and biases=== {{multiple image | align = right | direction = vertical | width = 220 | image1 = Jean Louis Théodore Géricault 001.jpg | caption1 = Flying gallop as shown by this painting ([[Théodore Géricault]], 1821) is [[Falsifiability|falsified]]; see below. | image2 = The Horse in Motion high res.jpg | caption2 = [[Sallie Gardner at a Gallop|Muybridge's photographs]] of ''The Horse in Motion'', 1878, were used to answer the question of whether all four feet of a galloping horse are ever off the ground at the same time. This demonstrates a use of photography as an experimental tool in science. }} Scientific methodology often directs that [[Hypothesis|hypotheses]] be tested in [[Scientific control|controlled]] conditions wherever possible. This is frequently possible in certain areas, such as in the biological sciences, and more difficult in other areas, such as in astronomy. The practice of experimental control and reproducibility can have the effect of diminishing the potentially harmful effects of circumstance, and to a degree, personal bias. For example, pre-existing beliefs can alter the interpretation of results, as in [[confirmation bias]]; this is a [[heuristic]] that leads a person with a particular belief to see things as reinforcing their belief, even if another observer might disagree (in other words, people tend to observe what they expect to observe).<ref name= beliefCreatesReality >[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S006526010860146X Mark Snyder (1984) When Belief Creates Reality] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210824183700/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S006526010860146X |date=2021-08-24 }} ''Advances in Experimental Social Psychology'' Volume '''18''', 1984, Pages 247-305</ref> {{Blockquote|text=[T]he action of thought is excited by the irritation of doubt, and ceases when belief is attained.|author=[[C.S. Peirce]]|source=''How to Make Our Ideas Clear'' (1877)<ref name= How/>}} A historical example is the belief that the legs of a [[Horse gallop|galloping]] horse are splayed at the point when none of the horse's legs touch the ground, to the point of this image being included in paintings by its supporters. However, the first stop-action pictures of a horse's gallop by [[Eadweard Muybridge]] showed this to be false, and that the legs are instead gathered together.<ref>{{harvp|Needham |Wang|1954|p=166}} shows how the 'flying gallop' image propagated from China to the West.</ref> Another important human bias that plays a role is a preference for new, surprising statements (see ''[[Appeal to novelty]]''), which can result in a search for evidence that the new is true.{{sfnp|Goldhaber|Nieto|2010|page=940}} Poorly attested beliefs can be believed and acted upon via a less rigorous heuristic.<ref name= mythIsAbelief >Ronald R. Sims (2003). ''Ethics and corporate social responsibility: Why giants fall.'' p. 21: {{"'}}A myth is a belief given uncritical acceptance by members of a group ...' – Weiss, ''Business Ethics'' p. 15."</ref> {{anchor|robustTheory}}Goldhaber and Nieto published in 2010 the observation that if theoretical structures with "many closely neighboring subjects are described by connecting theoretical concepts, then the theoretical structure acquires a robustness which makes it increasingly hard{{snd}}though certainly never impossible{{snd}}to overturn".{{sfnp|Goldhaber|Nieto|2010|page=942}} When a narrative is constructed its elements become easier to believe.{{sfnp|Lakatos|1976|pp=1—19}}<ref name= narrativeFallacy >{{harvp|Taleb|2007|p=72}} lists ways to avoid the narrative fallacy and confirmation bias; the narrative fallacy being a substitute for explanation.</ref> {{anchor|genesisOfScientificFact}}{{harvp|Fleck|1979|p=27}} notes "Words and ideas are originally phonetic and mental equivalences of the experiences coinciding with them. ... Such proto-ideas are at first always too broad and insufficiently specialized. ... Once a structurally complete and closed system of opinions consisting of many details and relations has been formed, it offers enduring resistance to anything that contradicts it". Sometimes, these relations have their elements assumed ''[[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]]'', or contain some other logical or methodological flaw in the process that ultimately produced them. [[Donald M. MacKay]] has analyzed these elements in terms of limits to the accuracy of measurement and has related them to instrumental elements in a category of measurement.{{efn-lg|name= macKay| 1=The scientific method requires testing and validation [[Empirical evidence|''a posteriori'']] before ideas are accepted.<ref name= conjugatePairs>{{cite book |quote=Invariably one came up against fundamental physical limits to the accuracy of measurement. ... The art of physical measurement seemed to be a matter of compromise, of choosing between reciprocally related uncertainties. ... Multiplying together the conjugate pairs of uncertainty limits mentioned, however, I found that they formed invariant products of not one but two distinct kinds. ... The first group of limits were calculable ''a priori'' from a specification of the instrument. The second group could be calculated only ''a posteriori'' from a specification of what was ''done'' with the instrument. ... In the first case each unit [of information] would add one additional ''dimension'' (conceptual category), whereas in the second each unit would add one additional ''atomic fact''. |pages=1–4 |last=MacKay |first=Donald M. |year=1969 |title=Information, Mechanism, and Meaning |place=Cambridge, MA |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=0-262-63032-X}} </ref>}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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