How Does Science Work?

[Quantum]

I have a friend whom I believe is gravely mistaken about how science works.

He believes that science works by coming up with a hypothesis then by doing everything you can to disprove the hypothesis. If it can't be disproved then the hypothesis becomes correct.

Is this true?

In all of my life I have only heard him use that description of how science works. I have never come across it anywhere else at all. Not in all of my years on the internet. Not in all of my entire life. (I am 42). He is the only one who has ever said this is how science works, so I just can not take him seriously. I have never heard anybody else say trhis at all. EVER.

The thing is he calls all of science a religion because of things like how science holds on to things like evolution. And will come up with some stupid DNA theory that doesn't match up with the scientific conclusions about religion and calls it a big flaw and therefore the entire theory is wrong because of this one hypothesis. He also seems to think that science should never be allowed to have room for error, should be correct the first time, and once established should never be changed under any circumstances.

And example of this is he gets extremely angry when he is talking about science says there was a dinosaur called a Diploducus, then they somehow magically changed their mind and said there was no Diplodocus that they made an error that those bones were actually parts of other Dinosaurs that were jumbled up.

He doesn't understand that science does self correct itself when better information comes along to show that they are wrong. Such as the Diplodocus error, and the discovery of Ardipithecus is also a good example.

Before Ardipithecus came along scientists believed that early hominids were knuckle walkers because the model they drew from was from Chimpanzees because Chimpanzees were the closest model to early hominid fossils to draw information on. When Ardi came along, she showed that early hominids walked upright and so they abandoned the knuckle walker hypothesis.

But if this was told to my friend he'd still get really pissed off that they came to the wrong conclusion in the first place and held that hypothesis for so many years, because, even though he does not directly say this, this does seem to be the gist of his anger, science should never be wrong in the first place and there is never any room for any kind of error under absolutely any circumstances.

I've told him that that is actually a fallacy of impossibly high standards, one that the religious, especially the Christian Creation "scientists" use, but he simply will not hold himself up to the same standards he puts science through and will not change his mind which I suspect is more through his religious prejudice and bigotry and a mistrust of authority from having bad experiences at school when he was a child.

I also believe that he was also misled by whoever told him that is how science works. I don't know if it was deliberately or accidentally, but either way he is mistaken and misled.

Here's how I've been taught science works. You come up with a hypothesis, test it out an x number of times, and base your conclusions on what the test results are, then it becomes a theory if the test result are conclusive.

For example, let's take this hypothesis: Ivory soap floats.

In order to test out that hypothesis a scientist fills a tank up with water and puts the soap in say one thousand times to see if it floats. (The number is an arbitrary one just for the sake of the example). So, let's say that it floats 986 times out of that thousand times. According to the way science wroks the overwhelming evidence is that Ivory Soap floats. So then the conclusion that "Ivory Soap floats" becomes a theory.

Now here's how my friends works. He gloms on to the fact that, for whatever reason, because the Ivory Soap didn't float 14 times, that means it creates a flaw in the hypothesis and because tere's a flaw in the hypothesis it proves that Ivory soap doesn't work. Because you have to do everything you can to disprove the hypothesis to see if it is correct.

So, science is wrong and now thew theory that Ivory soap floats becomes a religion and he will become highly pissed off that science is wrong in the first place and will be grasping at any othe alternate explanation he can to support his conclusion that Ivroy soap does not float.

Oh, and he'll say that a real scientist that comes up with a reason to support his conclusiont hat Ivory Soap does not float. And of course a couple of other "scientists" out of the ten thousand scientists that accept the theory because the overwhelming body of work is wrong because of the single flaw of the fourteen times it didn't float is the real science and that more and more scientists are flocking to this conclusion every day. And because they treat that "Theory" of Ivory Soap floating as a religion, it discredits all of science because all of science is just wrong and he has been researching the real evidence for a few monthsz now.

And he will not hold himself to the any other explanation but his own.

And quite frankly I am getting really fed up with this. At the very least I can not take him seriously and will never ascribe to his beliefs on science.

Because here's the thing.

In all of my years of being on the internet, which is about fifteen years now, the only people I have ever seen use these kinds of tactics are people who are mistrustful of authority for whatever reason or are very religious, and my friend is both. I have also seen these tactics used time and time again from the kinds of people who believe in things like "The moon landings are a hoax" or "911 was an inside job done by President Bush to foster The New World Order and the WTC was brought down by nano-thermite from within, not Muslim terrorists using planes because STEEL CANNOT MELT" and other crap like that.

The thing is he claims that if he is proven wrong then he will change his mind. But he never does so I just can't take him seriously. And so I don't discuss these kinds of things with him. I can never ascribe to his views and will never ascribe t his views.

 

[Umbran]

I have a friend whom I believe is gravely mistaken about how science works.

He believes that science works by coming up with a hypothesis then by doing everything you can to disprove the hypothesis. If it can't be disproved then the hypothesis becomes correct.

Is this true?

Well, yes and no.

The basic scientific method goes something like this:

1) You come up with a hypothesis about how the universe works.

2) From the hypothesis, you get a prediction of some observable physical phenomenon that will occur under a particular set of circumstances you can create. The prediction should be something that directly follows from your hypothesis, and it is best if it is something that is not also predicted by other popular hypotheses out there.

3) You devise an experiment to create the circumstances, and test if what you predicted happens.

4) If what you predicted happens, then you take it as support for the hypothesis. If what you predicted does not happen, you take it as suggestion that the hypothesis must be altered, and repeat.

Repeat the cycle enough times, and you can convince yourself and others that the hypothesis is correct, at least until someone comes up with a test that shows the Universe deviates from your current hypothesis.

Step 2 is extremely important. There are many hypotheses out there for which we cannot, even in theory, get a testable prediction. These hypotheses lie outside the realm of science.

The thing is he calls all of science a religion because of things like how science holds on to things like evolution.

Evolution and geology and several other topics are what we often call "historical sciences" because it is difficult to develop predictable tests for hypotheses, and test them today. They have to take their data fro the historical record. They tend to vary the method slightly, to something more like - form hypothesis, check a whole lot of available data to see if it is consistent with hypothesis, alter hypothesis. If you do this properly, the results are still pretty reliable. It is the same basic mental process, and still strongly supported by data.

It is still science, in that you can imagine data coming to light that makes the scientists throw current theories out the window. They simply don't get to choose when to find that data.

If your friend has a problem with evolutionary science, remind him that pretty much all modern medicine is drawn from a basis in evolution.

And example of this is he gets extremely angry when he is talking about science says there was a dinosaur called a Diploducus, then they somehow magically changed their mind and said there was no Diplodocus that they made an error that those bones were actually parts of other Dinosaurs that were jumbled up.

I don't know the example you speak of in detail. Perhaps there was one particular specimen that had some jumbled-up bones. But Diplodocus in general is still a recognized dinosaur genus, with many representative examples. If he thinks that someone making an error in one specimen means that the genus cannot exist at all...

Well, that's like saying that because one person thought he solved a particular sudoku puzzle, but actually had an error in it that he discovered later, that sudoku puzzles in general don't exist. As you say, the fact that the error can be discovered and corrected is example that the method works, even if individuals bobble on occasion.

I've told him that that is actually a fallacy of impossibly high standards, one that the religious, especially the Christian Creation "scientists" use

Here, I ought to inform you - EN World has a "no politics, no religion" rule. The beliefs of real-world religions are not up for critique on these boards.

 

[Pbartender]

He's half right.

Science goes something like like this:

You start with a question... "Why does Ivory soap float?"

First, "characterization"... That's making observations, definitions and measurements of the thing you want to study. In your example, it would be measuring the density of the water, defining the purity of the water used, the density of ivory soap, defining the chemical composition of Ivory soap, making direct observations of ivory soap floating in water, perhaps dissect a bar of Ivory soap and other non-floating soaps to compare what they look like inside, making direct observations of the manufacturing process of Ivory soap and other non-floating soap.

Next, a "hypothesis"... You come up with a theoretical and hypothetical statement that explains the measurements and observations. "Ivory soap floats, because of miniscule air bubbles that reduce the density of Ivory soap enough to allow it to float in water."

Now, we make a few equally hypothetical predictions based on that theory... "If tiny bubbles in the bar make Ivory soap float, then if we make a bar of Ivory soap without bubbles it shouldn't float. Likewise, a bar of non-Ivory soap with enough tiny bubbles to float should have a similar internal structure to Ivory soap."

Then, we perform experiments based on those predictions... Build a bar of Ivory soap with no bubbles, and see if it floats. We do this many, many times to make sure we didn't make a mistake in the process of the experiment.

Now we check the results of the experiment against our theory and its predictions. If the evidence supports our theory, then great -- try more experiments and keep gathering supportive evidence until there's absolutely no doubt that your theory is correct. At that point, the scientific community may consider your theory fact, and it become a Law.

If it doesn't, then we've possibly proven our theory wrong. First we double check our experiment to make certain it was valid. If it is, we go back almost to square one, revise our theory to fit the new data, make new predictions and try new experiments.


The trouble comes because there are several Theories out there that are pretty good at explaining something, but simply can't be conclusively proven due to the nature of the question... Evolution and the Big Bang are good examples. At this point in our technological history, we've no good way to recreate them in a laboratory in a way that proves them without a doubt. People on both sides of the fence often confuse those sorts of Theories with Laws. The forget that while there is a lot of evidence pointing toward those Theories and that while those Theories are probably the bests explanations we currently have, that we still don't have quite enough evidence to consider them fact, and that on-going experiments and observations are continually causing those Theories to be debated and revised, even if in small ways.

However, where your friend is most wrong is that scientists (should) never go into an experiment with the purposeful intent of proving a theory right or wrong (although due to politics in scientific fields, it often happens that way regardless). It is too easy to rig an experiment or massage the data to give the results you want (the recent scandal concerning global warming data is a good example). Scientists are meant to be unbiased, merely comparing the collected data with the expected results, reporting how they correlate or don't, and then considering how that affects the original hypothesis.

 

[Pbartender]

I don't know the example you speak of in detail. Perhaps there was one particular specimen that had some jumbled-up bones. But Diplodocus in general is still a recognized dinosaur genus, with many representative examples. If he thinks that someone making an error in one specimen means that the genus cannot exist at all...

He may be thinking of the apatosaurus/brontosaurus mix up.

In 1877 Othniel Marsh found a dinosaur skeleton that he named Apatosaurus ajax. Two years later, he found another similar, more complete specimen that he thought represented another genus of sauropod, which he named Brontosaurus excelsus. Later, Elmer Riggs did a more thorough comparison, and pointed out that the two specimens really belonged in the same genus. Brontosaurus excelsus became Apatosaurus excelsus, and while brontosaurus became a popular synonym it ceased to exist as an actual dinosaur.


Of course, this is a perfect example of the Scientific Method in action, rather than proof against it.

 

[Quantum]

Here, I ought to inform you - EN World has a "no politics, no religion" rule. The beliefs of real-world religions are not up for critique on these boards.

Sorry, thank you for letting me know. I'm just extremely frustrated with his attitudes with science and I've had it up to here trying to convince him he's wrong.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Sorry, thank you for letting me know. I'm just extremely frustrated with his attitudes with science and I've had it up to here trying to convince him he's wrong.

For what it's worth, you're not alone In my neck of the woods-- with my own family, even-- I face this all the time. Imxp, it's a mindset that reinforces itself, and there's little to be done about it.

My advice is to just let it go & agree to disagree, because it's not likely you'll change his mind anytime soon. Keep the friendship intact; don't let this mess it up. And good luck with it, however you handle it

 

[ssampier]

The_orc_within has the best advice: let it go. It's likely you will never convince him of his "wrongness" so don't waste your breath. Save your time and energy and enjoy your time at a sport or other activity. Assuming he can be civil and understand your viewpoint is different, it really shouldn't matter.

 

[jaerdaph]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fI8834iCgo]YouTube - Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With Science[/ame]

 

[Pbartender]

Sorry, thank you for letting me know. I'm just extremely frustrated with his attitudes with science and I've had it up to here trying to convince him he's wrong.

Just remember that every scientific theory has its own close-minded unreasoning fanatics in just the same way that religious philosophies can have them.

So, to a certain degree, he does have a point.

 

[Merkuri]

One important aspect of science is that it needs to be peer-reviewed.

If I come up with an experiment that says ivory soap floats it's not good science unless other scientists can take my experiment and repeat it. It's been a while since I was in school, but I remember reading about a couple scientists who claimed to have created cold fusion (which, to the layman, should probably be better called "not frickin' hot fusion"), but no other scientists could duplicate their results. The scientific community assumed that something was wrong in the original experiment which corrupted the results. Something needs to be proved again and again and again before it's accepted by the scientific community.

I had an argument with somebody once about science, and his argument was that the scientists expect us to believe everything they say about a subject, and this is definitely not true. A theory needs to have a repeatable experiment behind it, or it needs to line up with all (or most of) the available data before it's accepted by the scientific community, and if you have the equipment you can repeat the experiment and see the results for yourself. I remember in physics class doing some fascinating experiments to prove some theories.

Another side to this is that science WANTS to be challenged. A good scientist won't put forth a theory and just expect everybody to believe him. A good scientist wants people to challenge his theory, to come up with experiments that disprove him. A good theory can stand up to these challenges, and a bad one will fall by the wayside. This is a good thing. It means that only the good theories survive.

Science is a journey. Scientists do not say, "This is how things work," they say, "This is how we think things work today."