User talk:Matthias Brendel/Scientific method

One of the areas that I felt that the WP article was weak was in its prescriptive tone. Other problems were in its sloppy misuse of language, its lack of references, amd its conflation of opinion and fact. To give some illustrations from this lead

Scientific method is the method of science.

The lead starts with a contentious assertion, the only word that escapes this being a truism is the word the, but this word contains the implication that there is a single method of science.

In most cases it refers only to the method of empirical sciences, which include natural and social sciences, but do not include mathematics. We do not describe here the method of mathematics.

What does this sentence say exactly? What is its purpose?

The method of empirical sciences is a body of techniques

This introduces a problem, because techniques here does not refer to what are conventionally called techniques in science, i.e. things like microscopy, spetroscopy, histology etc, rather it refers to modes or elements of reasoning

for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on observable, empirical, measurable evidence, and subject to laws or reasoning.

Apart from being a string of synonyms this section seems bland enough. However in the light of anything that must follow in the article as a whole, where theories hypotheses and the theory laden-ness of facts are central issues, this sentence becomes not so much bland as, well, misleadingly simplistic fluff

Although specialized procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, there are identifiable features that distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of developing knowledge.

This clearly is a central area of dispute. It is exactly the position refuted by Feyeraband, yet is asserted in the lead

Scientific researchers propose specific hypotheses as explanations of natural phenomena,

This is a statement about scientific researchers, and so it's legitimate to ask what is the status of this statement. Is it prescriptive of science, a true universal generalisation, or what? As a generalisation it is just wrong; there are a substantial number of scientists today in the biological sciences (Ia am definitely not among them) who actively denounce hypothesis driven science and claim that their activities are unbiased fact gathering.

and design experimental studies that test these predictions for accuracy.

Well no, those of us who do follow hypothesis-led science, or some of us at least, do follow Popper's prescription of designing experiments as attempted disproof of hypotheses. We do not test predictions for accuracy.

These steps are repeated in order to make increasingly dependable predictions of future results.

No again, as I generalisation I'd say this is just wrong. Maybe some do this but actually probably nobody I can think of.

So the specifics, when looked at closely simply seem to be unfounded, and are unreferenced so it's hard to see whether the problem is simply one of mistranslating from a sound original.

However the real difference in opinion is about the tone. This is written as though it is authority, it's a declarative and prescriptive sounding article. It implicitly declares this is the consensus view even if others will be mentioned later.

I have several problems with this. First, whose consensus? Second, why assert a consensus in an area where there are simply interesting differences of opinion? I started with the Medawar quote to make clear the obvious point that scientists are not taught this or any method, none consciously follow it and some obviously do not. Scientific method is a description of what scientists are thought to do, not a prescription for what they ought to do, and not true universally. However, even as a weak generality, how you describe anything depends on your theory and perspective, it's not objective truth, and different perspectives need to be displayed and not prioritised needlessly. Gareth Leng 09:42, 7 February 2007 (CST)

"but this word contains the implication that there is a single method of science.

In most cases it refers only to the method of empirical sciences, which include natural and social sciences, but do not include mathematics. We do not describe here the method of mathematics.

What does this sentence say exactly? What is its purpose?

The method of empirical sciences is a body of techniques

This introduces a problem, because techniques here does not refer to what are conventionally called techniques in science, i.e. things like microscopy, spetroscopy, histology etc, rather it refers to modes or elements of reasoning

for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on observable, empirical, measurable evidence, and subject to laws or reasoning.

Apart from being a string of synonyms this section seems bland enough. However in the light of anything that must follow in the article as a whole, where theories hypotheses and the theory laden-ness of facts are central issues, this sentence becomes not so much bland as, well, misleadingly simplistic fluff

Although specialized procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, there are identifiable features that distinguish scientific inquiry from other methods of developing knowledge.

This clearly is a central area of dispute. It is exactly the position refuted by Feyeraband, yet is asserted in the lead

Scientific researchers propose specific hypotheses as explanations of natural phenomena,

This is a statement about scientific researchers, and so it's legitimate to ask what is the status of this statement. Is it prescriptive of science, a true universal generalisation, or what? As a generalisation it is just wrong; there are a substantial number of scientists today in the biological sciences (Ia am definitely not among them) who actively denounce hypothesis driven science and claim that their activities are unbiased fact gathering.

and design experimental studies that test these predictions for accuracy.

Well no, those of us who do follow hypothesis-led science, or some of us at least, do follow Popper's prescription of designing experiments as attempted disproof of hypotheses. We do not test predictions for accuracy.

These steps are repeated in order to make increasingly dependable predictions of future results.

No again, as I generalisation I'd say this is just wrong. Maybe some do this but actually probably nobody I can think of.

So the specifics, when looked at closely simply seem to be unfounded, and are unreferenced so it's hard to see whether the problem is simply one of mistranslating from a sound original.

However the real difference in opinion is about the tone. This is written as though it is authority, it's a declarative and prescriptive sounding article. It implicitly declares this is the consensus view even if others will be mentioned later.

I have several problems with this. First, whose consensus? Second, why assert a consensus in an area where there are simply interesting differences of opinion? I started with the Medawar quote to make clear the obvious point that scientists are not taught this or any method, none consciously follow it and some obviously do not. Scientific method is a description of what scientists are thought to do, not a prescription for what they ought to do, and not true universally. However, even as a weak generality, how you describe anything depends on your theory and perspective, it's not objective truth, and different perspectives need to be displayed and not prioritised needlessly. Gareth Leng 09:42, 7 February 2007 (CST)

"but this word contains the implication that there is a single method of science. "

• I inserted a statement in the article, which indicates that there is consensus on this.
• Nothing more can be done, since one could also argue that the title of the article already implies that there is a single method of science. And what can we do? We should not be overcautious about neutral point of view. The title and some explanations must be written according to the majority view.

"What does this sentence say exactly? What is its purpose?"

• We have to indicate that almost nothing is true form the article regarding mathematics, which is a non empirical science.

"techniques here does not refer to what are conventionally called techniques in science"

• Technique does not refer here to practices in sciences, right. It refers to the techniques of inquiry. I do not see any problem in using this word.

"However in the light of anything that must follow in the article as a whole, where theories hypotheses and the theory laden-ness of facts are central issues, this sentence becomes not so much bland as, well, misleadingly simplistic fluff "

No. theory laddenness of observation does not mean that you can not state that observation is an element of the method of science and it is important. The statement that science is based on observation does not contradict with theory-laddennes. This is a simple, neutral statement. You may reformulate it to be more precise, but you can not be too detailed in an introduction.

"why assert a consensus in an area where there are simply interesting differences of opinion? "

Because we would like to have an introduction.

--Matthias Brendel 04:53, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Introductuion

If we would like to have an introduction and describe in the introduction the method of science, the best we can do, is to describe it as the most common view, which uses a realistic languiage and is something like the common denominator of critical realism and logical positivism.

Or we can ommit the introduction.

Or we can have an inroduction, but ommit to give any description of the method of science.

--Matthias Brendel 04:57, 8 February 2007 (CST)