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“the scientific method” is incredibly easy to understand and on top of that comes in many different forms and standards. Understanding the design of a particul

“the scientific method” is incredibly easy to understand and on top of that comes in many different forms and standards. Understanding the design of a particular experiment and the theories and values it attempts to put to the test is quite another matter. Scientists and laymen in completely different fields all understand “the scientific method”, but they often cannot even begin to read or understand each other's work or experiments. Luckily, the convenient thing is that the experiments that are used to support very policalized claims are often quite easy to understand to the lay man with some rudimentary knowledge, and it's the experiments in things such as particle physics or quantum chemistry that have almost no political influence that are incomprehensible without at least a 8 years of formal education in the specific field.

Nevermark 5y ago
I don't think the scientific method is actually that easy for most people to grasp. For a layperson, simply talking about experiments and repeatability doesn't really convey the reality of how science works. The way I describe the scientific method to regular people is its purpose: It is simply the growing and improving collection of methods we have found for separating fact, from fiction, illusion, bias, wishful thinking, tradition, coincidence, and every other form of misconception or non-predictive source. It is the only system of knowledge, that is based on relentlessly weeding out any false or unproven conjectures we have about reality. This conforms to actual practice: actual scientific activity includes falsifiable predictions, experiments, reviews and repeatability, but also math (a biggie obviously), statistics, revealed conflicts of interest, regular meta-studies of active areas, tests for data bias, simulations for exploring implications, discussion groups vetting and encouraging each other's ideas, cataloging of fruitful concepts for guiding inquiry such as symmetry, ... and on and on and on. And as new tests, methods or ideas are found useful, the scientific method accumulates them. What all these activities have in common is they decrease the chance that something incorrect will be accepted. And given all that testing and vetting and care, science holds itself to a higher standard than any other search for knowledge except pure math. And given that science is an inherently decentralized activity, carried out with experts in numerous overlapping fields, organizations, and areas of research, and the fact that nature itself contains no contradictions, it is very difficult for errors to stick around unnoticed in any area attracting much attention. Another practical part of science many people don't get, is most scientists are actively working at the intersection of the known and unknown, so are very aware of sciences limitations, and also the destructive danger to their own progress and credibility if they unwittingly or strategically choose to accept false premises, for political, economic or other reasons. Not that bad science is never done, but it is very risky for the scientists own credibility and ability to make any meaningful discovery. Coalitions to intentionally push false narratives would know they were severely handicapping themselves from further discovery, and sabotaging their own relevance to downstream scientific discovery and technological applications. Those of us familiar with science tend to take all this context for how and why science works for granted.
- beckman466 5y ago
  I really appreciate your willingness to jump in there and describe what you see; sharing your knowledge. > I don't think the scientific method is actually that easy for most people to grasp. Do you think most people have the actual opportunity to learn and grasp it though? My worries/experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179
  - Nevermark 5y ago
    I guess I would boil scientific awareness to two parts. I. How science works so well. I.e. the body of methods for vetting ideas, scientists brutal incentives to be honest and competent, natures inherent consistency as the final unassailable arbiter of truth, etc. II. Then how to judge the products of science: None of us can understand a tiny fraction of science directly, we must all learn to judge what science we can trust. From General Relativity to the game theory behind self-organizing ants, I think people need to recognize that although with effort they could understand individual effects, everyone has to trust other experts for most of their scientific knowledge. The best indicators of solid science, after personal understanding, are ideas that are widely accepted by many experts in the field, especially experts working across multiple overlapping fields. (Climate science is a fantastic example of the latter: Experts including chemists, atmospheric physicists, geologists, biologists, ecologists, solar physicists, .... almost every kind of science.) And another strong indicator of both stable and promising science is that it provides a workable foundation for further scientific and even technological advances. And finally, when non-scientist experts, whose career success objectively depends on recognizing good science (i.e. the military, insurance companies, ...) treat particular areas of science as credible, we can assume it is safe for us to as well.
    - beckman466 5y ago
      Thanks for your response, yet i'm not sure if you've read my question thoroughly enough because i'm not seeing a response to the question i posed, which is concerned with lack of access to scientific literacy opportunities.
mike_hearn 5y ago
I agree with the sibling comment by Nevermark: the scientific method isn't easy to understand at all, partly because nobody has a consistent definition of what it is. Your own comment illustrates the difficulty. You say the scientific method is easy to understand and then start talking about experiments. Experiments? Is that actually a required part of the scientific method? Apparently not: lots of fields presented as scientific to the public can't do experiments. Most obviously, neither climatology, epidemiology nor economics do experiments, despite being fields with enormous direct impact on governments and therefore people's lives. You can try to refine it to "making testable predictions" but then it would require that the predictions are actually tested - real scientific papers often make predictions without testing them against reality. What about computer science? Is it really a science? Most people would say the scientific method is a way to discover knowledge about the natural world, but there's nothing natural about computers. I myself am not convinced computer science is a science, but, it's treated as one by the institutions. The prevalence of papers that simply present unvalidated statistical/algebraic models raises huge questions about what science is in theory vs what it is in practice. In theory, science is about discovering knowledge about the natural world, by refining hypotheses which make testable predictions into validated theories. In practice science is whatever granting agencies, universities and journals find interesting. Nothing anywhere in the so-called scientific system actually tests that the work is following the scientific method, nor is there even a working definition of what that would mean. The result is that scientific journals routinely publish pseudo-scientific claims without realizing that it's what they're doing (see my other comment). In fact many fields are almost entirely a-theoretical: social psychology papers like the one this thread is about aren't rooted in an attempt to refine a grand unified theory of the mind. They're just testing academic folk intuitions, and are often driven by political or ideological concerns more than an attempt to derive theory. In such a world, deification of The Scientific Method™ is naive. There is no such method, just a hodgepodge of tactics and social conventions that seems to work better than nothing, but which may or may not be actually used by something labelled as scientific.

Nevermark 5y ago

I don't think the scientific method is actually that easy for most people to grasp. For a layperson, simply talking about experiments and repeatability doesn't really convey the reality of how science works. The way I describe the scientific method to regular people is its purpose: It is simply the growing and improving collection of methods we have found for separating fact, from fiction, illusion, bias, wishful thinking, tradition, coincidence, and every other form of misconception or non-predictive source. It is the only system of knowledge, that is based on relentlessly weeding out any false or unproven conjectures we have about reality. This conforms to actual practice: actual scientific activity includes falsifiable predictions, experiments, reviews and repeatability, but also math (a biggie obviously), statistics, revealed conflicts of interest, regular meta-studies of active areas, tests for data bias, simulations for exploring implications, discussion groups vetting and encouraging each other's ideas, cataloging of fruitful concepts for guiding inquiry such as symmetry, ... and on and on and on. And as new tests, methods or ideas are found useful, the scientific method accumulates them. What all these activities have in common is they decrease the chance that something incorrect will be accepted. And given all that testing and vetting and care, science holds itself to a higher standard than any other search for knowledge except pure math. And given that science is an inherently decentralized activity, carried out with experts in numerous overlapping fields, organizations, and areas of research, and the fact that nature itself contains no contradictions, it is very difficult for errors to stick around unnoticed in any area attracting much attention. Another practical part of science many people don't get, is most scientists are actively working at the intersection of the known and unknown, so are very aware of sciences limitations, and also the destructive danger to their own progress and credibility if they unwittingly or strategically choose to accept false premises, for political, economic or other reasons. Not that bad science is never done, but it is very risky for the scientists own credibility and ability to make any meaningful discovery. Coalitions to intentionally push false narratives would know they were severely handicapping themselves from further discovery, and sabotaging their own relevance to downstream scientific discovery and technological applications. Those of us familiar with science tend to take all this context for how and why science works for granted.

beckman466 5y ago
I really appreciate your willingness to jump in there and describe what you see; sharing your knowledge. > I don't think the scientific method is actually that easy for most people to grasp. Do you think most people have the actual opportunity to learn and grasp it though? My worries/experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661179
- Nevermark 5y ago
  I guess I would boil scientific awareness to two parts. I. How science works so well. I.e. the body of methods for vetting ideas, scientists brutal incentives to be honest and competent, natures inherent consistency as the final unassailable arbiter of truth, etc. II. Then how to judge the products of science: None of us can understand a tiny fraction of science directly, we must all learn to judge what science we can trust. From General Relativity to the game theory behind self-organizing ants, I think people need to recognize that although with effort they could understand individual effects, everyone has to trust other experts for most of their scientific knowledge. The best indicators of solid science, after personal understanding, are ideas that are widely accepted by many experts in the field, especially experts working across multiple overlapping fields. (Climate science is a fantastic example of the latter: Experts including chemists, atmospheric physicists, geologists, biologists, ecologists, solar physicists, .... almost every kind of science.) And another strong indicator of both stable and promising science is that it provides a workable foundation for further scientific and even technological advances. And finally, when non-scientist experts, whose career success objectively depends on recognizing good science (i.e. the military, insurance companies, ...) treat particular areas of science as credible, we can assume it is safe for us to as well.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    Thanks for your response, yet i'm not sure if you've read my question thoroughly enough because i'm not seeing a response to the question i posed, which is concerned with lack of access to scientific literacy opportunities.

mike_hearn 5y ago

I agree with the sibling comment by Nevermark: the scientific method isn't easy to understand at all, partly because nobody has a consistent definition of what it is. Your own comment illustrates the difficulty. You say the scientific method is easy to understand and then start talking about experiments. Experiments? Is that actually a required part of the scientific method? Apparently not: lots of fields presented as scientific to the public can't do experiments. Most obviously, neither climatology, epidemiology nor economics do experiments, despite being fields with enormous direct impact on governments and therefore people's lives. You can try to refine it to "making testable predictions" but then it would require that the predictions are actually tested - real scientific papers often make predictions without testing them against reality. What about computer science? Is it really a science? Most people would say the scientific method is a way to discover knowledge about the natural world, but there's nothing natural about computers. I myself am not convinced computer science is a science, but, it's treated as one by the institutions. The prevalence of papers that simply present unvalidated statistical/algebraic models raises huge questions about what science is in theory vs what it is in practice. In theory, science is about discovering knowledge about the natural world, by refining hypotheses which make testable predictions into validated theories. In practice science is whatever granting agencies, universities and journals find interesting. Nothing anywhere in the so-called scientific system actually tests that the work is following the scientific method, nor is there even a working definition of what that would mean. The result is that scientific journals routinely publish pseudo-scientific claims without realizing that it's what they're doing (see my other comment). In fact many fields are almost entirely a-theoretical: social psychology papers like the one this thread is about aren't rooted in an attempt to refine a grand unified theory of the mind. They're just testing academic folk intuitions, and are often driven by political or ideological concerns more than an attempt to derive theory. In such a world, deification of The Scientific Method™ is naive. There is no such method, just a hodgepodge of tactics and social conventions that seems to work better than nothing, but which may or may not be actually used by something labelled as scientific.