Science Meets Real Life

Science Meets Real Life



Science Meets Real Life

Part I: Scientific Method

Scenario 1: You arrive home late at night. You walk up to the front door, unlock it, and reach in to turn on the light switch located just inside the front door. The light does not come on! Now what?

Analysis

As a normal human being, you will go through a mental and physical process of hypothesis testing. The steps happen very rapidly in your mind and, prior to this, you may not have had names for the various steps, which are very much the scientific method. The scientific method is the means by which researchers are able to make conclusive statements about their studies with a minimum of bias (Kuhn, Thomas, 1962). The interpretation of data, for example the result of a new drug study, can be laden with bias. The researcher often has a personal stakes in the results of his work. As any skilled debater knows, just about any opinion can be justified and presented as fact. In order to minimize the influence of personal stakes and biased opinions, a standard method of testing a hypothesis is expected to be used by all members of the scientific community (Wilson, 1992).

Observation: Darkness, Switch On, No Light....still dark

Question: Is the Power Out?

Hypothesis/Prediction: If power is out, then lights will be out at all the neighbours when I look .

Experiment: Observation of neighbourhood lights (indirect evidence)

Results: If ANY house has lights, prediction fails, conclusion = reject hypothesis?

Possible error: Coleman Lantern, Generator

If all houses dark, prediction holds, conclusion = do not reject hypothesis?

Possible error: All out to dinner?

Conclusion: no lights in neighbourhoods, note chance error = no definitive answer.

People are not born with the ability to think critically, nor do they expand this ability naturally beyond survival-level thinking. The skills of scientific investigation are matched by critical thinking, which is therefore nothing more than scientific method used in everyday life rather than in specifically scientific disciplines or endeavors. Critical thinking is scientific thinking (John E. Freund 1990). Many books and papers describing critical thinking present it's goals and methods as identical or similar to the goals and methods of science. A scientifically-literate person, such as a math or science instructor, has learned to think critically to achieve that level of scientific awareness. But any individual with an advanced degree in any university discipline has almost certainly learned the techniques of critical thinking (Kuhn, Thomas, 1962).

Scenario 2: Develop your own detailed problem/observation and apply the scientific method to solve.

No matter how simple or complicated a science fair project is, the scientific method must be applied. If you use a basic one day science fair project format, one that is to be done over the weekend or a more intense long term project, the same steps must be followed or the results aren't valid! It is the process you go through that counts. Science experiments are designed to prove or disprove a question (Stent, ...