What is the scientific method? You may have seen simplified flow charts of the scientific method, which have an observation being made and then patterns in the data being sought to form a hypothesis, then a prediction is made more observations, followed by an adjustment of the hypothesis or confirmation of the hypothesis cycling back to the top of the situation if the hypothesis is rejected. If the hypothesis is confirmed, then with sufficient observational support it becomes a theory of nature or a law of nature. That sounds nice, but real science is a little messier than that and doesn't always adhere to anything as simple as a flowchart. However, the essence of that is true. We're using evidence-based reasoning, we're basing theories on data and we're setting up a communal situation where society of scientists is involved in making these decisions. In the history of science, a important milestone was the development of the first societies of scientists in the 17th century dating back from the time of Newton. This of course followed on from the Industrial Revolution and the imposition of science into the industrial arena where it was responsible for the creation of a huge amount of wealth of England in the 16th and 17th century. The Royal Society was formed in the mid 17th century as the first group of scientists committed to open communication of their results to peer review of their data and to collaboratively working on the big scientific issues of the day. The Royal Society is the precursor for the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and the analogous societies all over the world. So science is a communal enterprise, but it's not a closed shop. The results have to be made available to the general public, politicians, policymakers, educators, and the general taxpayer who often funds this enterprise. So when we talk of the scientific method, we have to recognize that it's quite a complex enterprise carried out by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. So scientists are seeking natural causes or explanations for what happens in nature. That's key, supernatural explanations deus ex machina or arbitrary or ad hoc causes that change on the situation are not considered proper scientific explanations. A scientific theory should explain as large amount of data as possible. There's another scientific criteria that comes into play, which is actually more of an aesthetic judgment is called Occam's Razor dating back to the 14th century. It says that among-st various possible explanations for a phenomenon or a set of data, the simplest possible explanation is usually correct. Now, notice that that's a dangerous and interesting presumption. How do we know that nature is fundamentally simple? How do we know that the simplest explanation is correct? What it really means is that if you put enough bells and whistles on a theory in many adjustable parameters as you want, you can explain any data-set. The simplest theories of nature that have wide explanatory power like the theory of gravity like the theory of natural selection are very simple to describe and are mathematically simple in their formulations. So we have evidence from the progress of science over the last few centuries that the simplest theories of nature are indeed correct. But this simple description and the simple flowchart of course doesn't encompass some vital elements of science in addition to the imagination and creativity I mentioned before. What about the role of luck? In scientific discovery, luck can play a role. Some researchers or investigators just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They happen to notice things. Louis Pasteur famous scientists from the 19th-century said fortune favors the prepared mind. In that phrase, he's acknowledging both the presence of luck or serendipity in science, but also the fact that it takes a sharp mind and a mind aware of the situation and the possibility to notice that something is amiss, to notice an anomaly that might lead to a new explanation or a new theory. That is the power of a good scientist. There was an idea from the early 20th century in the philosophy of science called falsificationism. It holds basically that scientific theories can be falsified but never verified. Even the falsification idea is not quite right in practice. It implies that theories are falsified by one discrepant data point leading to a new theory and perhaps a scientific revolution. But the real situations of science are a little more interesting than that. Consider these two related but actually interestingly different examples from astronomy. In the 19th and 18th century, anomalies were seen in the orbits of the outermost known planets. The orbit of Uranus was found to have anomalies that couldn't simply be explained by Newton's law of gravity. Because people believe that Newton's law of gravity was a correct predictor of orbits, they use these anomalies to predict the presence of an outermost planet called Neptune and infer its orbit. It was subsequently discovered and a confirmation of Newton's law of gravity. So there was a situation where an anomaly in the orbit of one planet leads to the inference of as yet undiscovered planet. When the planet is subsequently discovered, it's an affirmation of the existing theory. Flash forward to the early 20th century and an anomaly is found in the orbit of Mercury. The innermost planet is perihelia closest approach to the sun advances or precesses by a very small angular amount every year. It's a very subtle effect, but it was clearly measured by the early 20th century. This little effect had no understanding within Newton's Law of Gravity and could have led to its overthrow. But in fact, in the hands of Albert Einstein, it what became an explanation understood in terms of curved space-time and the general theory of relativity. So here was a situation where an anomaly in the orbit of an inner planet instead of affirming Newton's law of gravity, leads to a profoundly different theory of gravity general relativity. Only with hindsight, can we see the clear distinction between these two situations. Science works in the moment of discovery and progress. So these distinctions are not always as clear cut, which is why scientists debate them. Another issue that is sometimes stereotyped in science is the issue of authority. Scientists are in an authoritative position because they speak the language of science because they have access to the data and the tools to measure the universe. But that doesn't give them exclusivity in terms of what is right because they are bound to communicate their results to a broader audience. However, on the flip side, it is not true that it's a matter of opinion whether a theory is right. Science is not in the end a democracy. We don't vote over who likes one theory versus another theory. The issue is decided by the passage of time, by better observations and by intense debate among scientists one-on-one or at the large scientific meetings that we see around the country in the world every year. Even the idea of a theory has some subtleties to it. For example, we want our theories to be ambitious as possible. Newton's theory of gravity is suitably ambitious. It supposes to apply to all planets, stars, and galaxies in the universe. So far when the gravity is weak has been proven to do so. But how do we know when we're trying to explain everything in the universe which in the end is our ultimate goal in astrophysics. When we've overreached, we might have a theory that explains everything we can see and then make some predictions for things we can't see or haven't yet observed. How do we know that we've not overreached and produced a theory of too much? A theory that explains things that don't actually happen in the universe. That's a profound puzzle. We never know whether we're going to get there. In physics, there are definitely examples where this is an issue. Scientists are reaching for a new theory of how matter works, which involves string theory and that's a highly esoteric mathematical theory involving 10-dimensional space time, which is as yet uncorroborated by lab experiments. At what point do we decide that string theory is overreach and not a legitimate scientific theory. That's a debate for the physicists to have. Now that we've talked about what science is, you should be well placed to understand what science isn't and in the modern culture, awash with uncritical thinking and sloppy pseudo-scientific ideas this is essential. It's the only way to sort the wheat the facts you should know for your everyday life and how to make decisions in the real world from the chat, that froth of ideas and opinions and attitudes that have no rational basis. This may be familiar to some of you. It's a segment from the trailer for The Iconic TV series The X-Files. In it, we see Mulder and Scully meeting for the first time. They are archetypes in the series. Scully is the scientist. She's the agent who follows the rules of science and logic and takes the road that they lead to. Mulder is a bit of a pseudo-scientist a bit of a mystic. He likes wild ideas, crazy theories, irrational ideas that have a little bit of scientific basis. The debate they have is an iconic debate between the scientific method and the method of pseudoscience, where ideas might seem to have some scientific basis but in the end are not scientific. Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted. Agent Mulder? I'm Dana Scully. I've been assigned to work with you. Isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded. So did you take off to get stuck with this detail, Scully? Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you. Really? I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me. If you have any data about my qualifications or credentials- You're a medical doctor. You teach at the academy. Here's your undergraduate degree in physics. Einstein's twin paradox, a new interpretation, Dana Scully senior thesis. Now, that's the credential, rewriting Einstein. Did you bother to read it? I did. I liked it. It's just most of my work. Laws of physics rarely seems to apply. Maybe I can get your medical opinion on this though. Oregon female, age 21. No explainable cause of death. Autopsy shows nothing, zip. There are however these two distinct marks on her lower back. Dr. Scully, can you ID these marks? Needle punctures maybe. An animal bite. Electrocution of some kind. How's your chemistry? This is the substance found in the surrounding tissue. It's organic. I don't know. Is it some synthetic protein? It may. I have never seen it before either. But here it is again in Sturgis, South Dakota. Again, in Shamrock, Texas. Do you have a theory? I have plenty of theories. Maybe what you can explain to me is why it's bureau policy to label these cases as unexplained phenomenon and ignore them. Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials? Logically, I would have to say no. Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilities that- Conventional wisdom. Do you know this Oregon female? She's the fourth person in her graduating class to die under mysterious circumstances. Now, when convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility? The girl obviously died of something. If it was natural causes, it's plausible that there was something missed in the postmortem. If she was murdered, it's plausible there was a sloppy investigation. What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look. I'm not going to talk much about UFOs, except to say that no professional astronomer believes that they represent visitations from an alien species. There are many, many reasons and we can go into them for why this is the case. But basically, the evidence is not there. By evidence of course, I mean, evidence that can be corroborated by scientists. Not a photograph too easy to do in photoshop. Not even a pace of material that seems to be strange, too hard to prove its extra terrestrial. I'm talking about convincing evidence. As for the government conspiracy aspect of this, I find that potentially laughable given how hard it is for the government to keep any secret that it could keep a secret of this magnitude. Independent of UFOs. There are many ideas that have traction in the popular culture that have no scientific legitimacy. Perhaps the most amusing spin-off of the UFO idea is the notion of crop circles. So I'll use that as an example. Learned papers have actually been written on some crop circles, which appeared to project onto fields of wheat, mathematical theorems that were not yet present in mathematical textbooks, and so must have emerged from the minds of aliens. Now, apart from the simple implausibility of the fact that highly intelligent aliens would travel large distances across our galaxy just depressed down fields of our wheat, and make no other contact. I think these ideas are plain wishful thinking. It turns out that the genesis of crop circles date back to the 1980s when I lived in Britain. The two guys who sat in a pub and dreamed up this scam, admitted to it within weeks. But by then the copycats had spread to the United States, Canada, Australia, and the other English speaking world. You can probably Google crop circles and still find stories about how crop circles represent alien visitations to the earth. Pseudoscience can be amusing except in totality, it has a corrosive effect on the modern culture. Because we exist in a situation where scientific and rational thinking is required to solve some of the world's problems, ranging from health, to how we feed the planet, to how we can deal with the changing temperature of our planet. If we don't apply scientific reasoning to these problems, we'll never solve them. So knowing what science is, sharply demarcates what science is not. There is no simplistic scientific method. But science does involve evidence-based reasoning and the testing of hypothesis which is sequentially confirmed by application to lots of data can elevate to the point of theories or laws of natures. Examples of this have happened throughout the last few centuries. Knowing what science is helps us decide what science is not. Hopefully, in our everyday lives help us ward off irrational or magical thinking, which any newspaper or magazine will confirm still pervades the popular culture.
