Our scientific system is the best method we have ever come up with for finding out how things work and what is true.
Many people think of science as just another subject that they studied in school along with History, English and Spanish. And though many people love science, not many people understand what science really is in terms of the system that we, as humans, have developed to find out what is true. Understanding how and why this system works so well, is fundamental to understanding the world we live in.
The scientific system we have developed is the best way to find the truth that humans have ever come up with, and the system is fairly simple though how it can be used and applied is mind mindbogglingly complex. It follows these simple steps:
- Question- Ask a question that you want to understand and define the terms (see our article on what makes a good scientific question).
- Hypothesize- Form a hypothesis to explain your question.
- Experiment- Set up an experiment that will measure and test your hypothesis
- Analyze- Look at and interpret data
- Conclude- Make conclusions based on the data collected
- Communicate- Share the detailed experiment and data collected usually in journals.
- Re-Test- Have others set up experiments and confirm/disprove your hypothesis
After that, you “rinse and repeat”. Our scientific system which includes peer-reviewed journals, and incentivization for both publishing data, as well as disproving bad experiments and bad data allows for the system to weed out bad experiments and bad data.
This is not to say that some false information doesn’t sneak through. You have probably all heard about the study that was published attempting to link the MMR vaccine to autism, and though it did get published it quickly got refuted, other studies tested this link and found it to be false, the article was retracted and through further studies the General Medical Council found that the Doctor had clear conflicts of interest (he was being paid by a group looking for a link), and he changed and falsified data. The Doctor that wrote the article lost his medical license and several of the scientists that went on to disprove his falsified data had their careers boosted by finding the truth.
this may still be a bad thing.
And therein lies the beauty of the system that we have. It’s set up to have other people check your work, and if it was just a bad experiment that you made, they prove you wrong, and your experiment gets refuted. If you falsified your data or were paid off, you could end your career, and the system is set up to boost the careers of those who find bad science.
From this, when you have several experiments all done by different scientists, tested in different ways all verifying the same hypothesis, you can start to reveal what is an objective truth. Or as Neil Degrasse Tyson likes to say: a truth, “that is true, regardless of whether or not you believe in it.”
Our ability to find out how things work and what is true is what has taken us out of the caves, and is what will bring us to new frontiers. That is why science is important. It is the best method to find truth.
Further info and links:
Neil deGrasse Tyson on why science is important
Andrew Wakefield (MMR-Autism Doctor) Wikipedia Page
Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on science evolving as we know more
(Most relevant portion is from 3:00 to 17:00, but the entire talk is very good)