Scientific Method…one or many?

Have you heard of the “scientific method”? You have a question, you develop a hypothesis, and test it with careful experiments; and, based on these experiments, find out if your hypothesis is true…or something like that…

Scientists often write papers to make the “scientific method” look that way, but it’s usually messier. A typical scientific paper looks like this:
1. You ask the right question. The question is important. The answer will make the world a better place.

2. You find out what people already know, and it’s not enough. Then you can focus on what people don’t know.

3. You do experiments. Or take observations of nature. You do a better job because you know what others missed. You may know what others missed because other scientists wrote it down. Or maybe because you missed on your first try.

4. You look for patterns in your observations

5. You develop a hypothesis to explain the pattern, and it works.

6. You suggest a way to improve on your work.
In real life, scientists repeat Steps 3-5 until they find a hypothesis that fits the pattern. This might call for more data. For example, they might think of more than one hypothesis that explains the data, and they want to end up with only one. Scientists might have 40 different hypotheses or versions of hypotheses before they are satisfied.

Scientists might even go back to Step 2, because the new hypothesis (or data) might remind them of something they’d read earlier.

Or they might even go back to Step 1, because they might find out that they have discovered something that explains a lot more than the simple question they started with.

Next time, I’ll provide a specific example.