The Scientific Method For Dummies

[JakeStarkey]

Biology belongs in science class, intelligent design belongs in liberal arts class.

This is not difficult, folks.

 

[Gadawg73]

I remember reading a book by a world renowned polygrapher who told a story about being in Italy for a conference when the local police asked him for help. A rich italian businessman's wife had disappeared and the cops couldn't find the body but he was stupid enough to let himself be hooked up to the machine. the polygrapher didn't know how to speak italian so he asked for photos of the businessman's villa. after silently presenting the photos and getting physiological results he was able to tell the police where to find the body and the businessman went to jail.

this polygraph expert believed that the methods routinely used are inadequate and can be manipulated. but that recognition of pertinent images can't be faked. interesting stuff.

It is interesting but police do not ask for help from polygraphers ever.

Dun the state police departments have such folks on staff, Gadawg? Nice to see you post again, BTW.

FBI does and some police do but nothing they get from a polygraph test is ever admissable as any form of evidence and not in the form of what he posted. Could tell where the body was from the results of a polygraph and no testimony? Come on. MIght have read it but can't believe it. They never use polugraphers that way, ever. Not now and not for the last 25 years. Now he added the 1970s part in anther post and that is a different story. Didn't see that in his first post. They got away with using them then as there was no concrete evience of their unreliability then. All American courts and most other countries have not allowed these tests as evidence in any form for decades. Why? Because they are never reliable other than a tool for fear as many believe they do produce results of a lie and they fess up!
As private detective licensed since 1979 I have used polygraph examiners many, many times. A great interrogation tool in the private sector but we know they do not tell when someone lies. If police use them that hurts their case in a criminal case because the jury will beinstructed as to their unreliability. Skilled job interview interrogation can reveal "deception", whatever the hell that is and how it applies is different in each individual so I advise my corporate clients to shy away from doing it.
If polygraph tests had any validity women everywere would hook their husbands up to them every Monday morning for a test on the truth of what they hae been up to!

 

[JakeStarkey]

Our Jag office in the mid 1980s used the test often enough for some to make a living at it. Criminal Defense attorneys quickly caught on that if they could get a negative of guilt on their own administered tests and forward those to the Convening Authority, that often the JAG for the command would drop charges and press for nonadministrative judicial punishment.

 

[Foxfyre]

I cannot prove God exists any more than I can prove that I am looking forward to seeing an old friend or that I hope for a certain outcome or that I want to be a millionaire. Yet the most staunch Atheist does not question my reported feelings of anticipation or desire or anticipation even though these cannot be tested, falsified, or replicated by any scientific process.

Yet that same Atheist will deny that I have experienced God based purely on his/her insistance that there is no way to prove it.

For me that is totally illogical.

Maddie raises the question of how there can also be God and an imperfect world with grief, pain, suffering, injustice, etc. etc. etc.

Yet she does not question how there can be millionaires who experience no joy from their wealth. She doesn't question that some people enjoy alcoholic beverages with no ill effect while others become ill, hallucinate, or become hopelessly addicted. It doesn't bother her that the automobile gives us tremendous freedom and mobility and safety even as it is involved with thousands who lose property or loved ones or who incur pain, maiming, suffering, death.

For me it is illogical to accept that many wonderful things exist imperfectly but reject that a deity can exist in an imperfect world.

For me, who has experienced God, it is incomprehensible to not believe in that experience. There is no way to falsify or replicate that experience any more than I can falsify or replicate the hope, desire, or anticipation that I experience in other things.

He who has not experienced may doubt or accept the validity of the experience of another. But in all cases, both doubt and acceptance require faith.

And as for sufficiency of my belief, experience, faith or whatever one wishes to call it, I go back to logic that tells me that if I could fully understand, comprehend, or explain the God I experienced, he wouldn't be much of a God.

Let's be clear, miss. We BOTH believe in God. My contention is, his existence cannot be proven via the scientific method -- not that he does not exist. Faith is, at its base, a choice made from a pyschological need (to please one's parents, to feel less vulnerable, to satisfy a craving for justice, etc.) and no matter how strong that need is and how firm the belief is we have chosen to fulfill it, that cannot be "scientific evidence".

BTW, if God exists (and I agree he does, this is just for fun) why don't feral children ever report such a belief?

I don't believe any civilization anywhere, no matter how isolated or primitive, has ever been discovered that did not hold some religious beliefs. The instinct to reach for a power or powers greater than ourselves or beyond our present reach seems to be ingrained in the human DNA. I don't know that no feral child has ever been without such thoughts or concepts and neither do you.

This phenomenon alone is sufficiently prevalent to merit consideration in Anthropology and other social sciences if not in the physical sciences.

And what seems impossible or improbable to us now may not be impossible or improbable to generations yet to come. Via Aristotle, Plato, and other great scientific minds, science was alive and well at the height of the Roman Empire and throughout the medieval period. Yet many scientific concepts then have subsequently been shown to be wrong--some at great cost to those who challenged them--and new concepts were developed only again to be discredited as scientific disciplines have evolved. Based on the history we know, it is essentially a certainty that many scientific concepts accepted as the norm now will also be subsequently discredited by generations to come.

And there are scientific wonders to be discovered that we haven't even thought of yet, much less considered.

Many scientifics concepts have stood the test of time, but those that are challenged are sometimes challenged at great cost to those who question them just as has been the case throughout all history.

There is a display just inside the front doors of the Cherry Hill library here in Albuquerque with the caption: a mind functions only if it is open. I think nobody can truly call himself or herself scientist if he or she feels threatened by those who question or see possibilities beyond what we can now falsify or replicate.

 

[antagon]

this is why the ability to falsify and replicate observations or theories is not core to scientific method. instead, these are potential tools of scientific inquiry. science is rightfully less open-minded than common observation or logic. it is a discipline, hence it requires discipline. this is how a conclusion that luck was responsible for something is not scientific. that might be a narrow-minded perspective, but it is one which facilitates answers which can be used in the future in a more predictable and reliable way. in turn these reliable answers support answers to deeper and broader questions where a more 'open-minded' approach would fail to inform an observer of what's plausible and what's not.

 

[Foxfyre]

this is why the ability to falsify and replicate observations or theories is not core to scientific method. instead, these are potential tools of scientific inquiry. science is rightfully less open-minded than common observation or logic. it is a discipline, hence it requires discipline. this is how a conclusion that luck was responsible for something is not scientific. that might be a narrow-minded perspective, but it is one which facilitates answers which can be used in the future in a more predictable and reliable way. in turn these reliable answers support answers to deeper and broader questions where a more 'open-minded' approach would fail to inform an observer of what's plausible and what's not.

But just as an example, what basis do you have to conclude that luck will nver be deemed scientific? What if it is discovered by some brilliant young mind now or later, even much later, that there is a such a thing as luck? We know that there is such a thing as odds because it has been mathematically proved. But nobody can account for how one person seems to beat the odds with what seems to be with implausible consistency. We call that 'luck'. What if we find out that this person is subconsciously using some sort of kinetic energy or mind control that gives him an advantage? Or that there is some outside force that favors him? That luck is real? And measurable?

Of course it would destroy the gambling industry, but an open mind has to allow for all possibilities that we cannot now judge for certain.

 

[antagon]

science must treat luck as illusory and address direct causes in relation to effects. re-read the previous post to glean the implications of such.

 

[Foxfyre]

science must treat luck as illusory and address direct causes in relation to effects. re-read the previous post to glean the implications of such.

I disagree. I think there is plenty of room for science to think outside the box and that good science always does leave the door open for opportunity and possibility for the yet undiscovered to be out there. I feel especially blessed to have had some excellent science professors who believed that. And yes, they had their PhDs in their disciplines.

 

[Big Fitz]

Did someone just hear Old Rocks and the Global Warmist Front burst into flames of rage?

 

[antagon]

science must treat luck as illusory and address direct causes in relation to effects. re-read the previous post to glean the implications of such.

I disagree. I think there is plenty of room for science to think outside the box and that good science always does leave the door open for opportunity and possibility for the yet undiscovered to be out there. I feel especially blessed to have had some excellent science professors who believed that. And yes, they had their PhDs in their disciplines.

science is facilitated by thinking within a box. it is not engineering. it is not life. drawing a conclusion to something outside of this box is not science, no matter how blessed one may feel about it. for scientists (and the rest of us), its a pretty big box, and can be expanded through the simplex i'd described two posts back, but that box is the extent of the wherewithal of scientific inquiry outside of which conclusions are not scientific.

 

[Foxfyre]

science must treat luck as illusory and address direct causes in relation to effects. re-read the previous post to glean the implications of such.

I disagree. I think there is plenty of room for science to think outside the box and that good science always does leave the door open for opportunity and possibility for the yet undiscovered to be out there. I feel especially blessed to have had some excellent science professors who believed that. And yes, they had their PhDs in their disciplines.

science is facilitated by thinking within a box. it is not engineering. it is not life. drawing a conclusion to something outside of this box is not science, no matter how blessed one may feel about it. for scientists (and the rest of us), its a pretty big box, and can be expanded through the simplex i'd described two posts back, but that box is the extent of the wherewithal of scientific inquiry outside of which conclusions are not scientific.

I sure am glad that scientists of the past (and hopefully the present) didn't think they were required to stay within set parameters. Otherwise we would still think the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around the Earth and doctors would be using leeches to treat fevers. I said absolutely nothing about drawing conclusions about anything, however. I did suggest that your conclusion that 'luck is an illusion' (as just one example) is way too confining for me and for at least some scientists I admire.

 

[antagon]

i said it originally, and presumed that we were talking about the original reference to luck:

this is how a conclusion that luck was responsible for something is not scientific.

the caveat about conclusions is important. that's what the box envelops. the idea that the earth was round is a conclusion within the box. the idea that it is flat does comes from outside the box.

 

[Foxfyre]

i said it originally, and presumed that we were talking about the original reference to luck:

this is how a conclusion that luck was responsible for something is not scientific.

the caveat about conclusions is important. that's what the box envelops. the idea that the earth was round is a conclusion within the box. the idea that it is flat does comes from outside the box.

But once the 'flat Earth' concept was all that there was inside the box. It was not until somebody was willing to think outside the box that science was able to move away from that conclusion. That is why I say science NEVER forms a conclusion that is wholly contained within specific parameters, but always leaves room for a different conclusion to be discovered.

Certainty is a very big word to any scientist.

Those that confine scientific conclusions to specific parameters and don't leave any room for thinking outside the box I think aren't dealing in science as much as they are dealing in dogma.

 

[Gadawg73]

i said it originally, and presumed that we were talking about the original reference to luck:

this is how a conclusion that luck was responsible for something is not scientific.

the caveat about conclusions is important. that's what the box envelops. the idea that the earth was round is a conclusion within the box. the idea that it is flat does comes from outside the box.

But once the 'flat Earth' concept was all that there was inside the box. It was not until somebody was willing to think outside the box that science was able to move away from that conclusion. That is why I say science NEVER forms a conclusion that is wholly contained within specific parameters, but always leaves room for a different conclusion to be discovered.

Certainty is a very big word to any scientist.

Those that confine scientific conclusions to specific parameters and don't leave any room for thinking outside the box I think aren't dealing in science as much as they are dealing in dogma.

"Outside the box" is an awful large, unspecific and generic term of what?
Science is always testing their conclusions over and over and over again, especially in the medical field with vacinnes and medicine.
Dogma is religion and beliefs that you can never test with the scientific method.

 

[Old Rocks]

Did someone just hear Old Rocks and the Global Warmist Front burst into flames of rage?

Not at all. Since most of my posts on that subject have been from peer reviewed scientific journals. Global warming and GHGs have been the subject of scientific research since Fourier in 1820. And anyone that cares to can access most of that research on the net. At present, the opposition to the fact that GHGs are creating a warmer earth comes from politics, not science. A very large group of people who provide, at great profit, energy from fossil fuels fear their ox is going to get gored. Never mind what the eventual effect is on our descendents.

Every day, the concepts involved in global warming are being investigated by real scientists. And they are publishing their results. And I will continue to post as many of those results as I can find. From journals like Science, Nature, and the Journal of Geophysics. Not from blogs of an undegreed ex-TV weatherman who does no real research.

 

[Old Rocks]

i said it originally, and presumed that we were talking about the original reference to luck:

the caveat about conclusions is important. that's what the box envelops. the idea that the earth was round is a conclusion within the box. the idea that it is flat does comes from outside the box.

But once the 'flat Earth' concept was all that there was inside the box. It was not until somebody was willing to think outside the box that science was able to move away from that conclusion. That is why I say science NEVER forms a conclusion that is wholly contained within specific parameters, but always leaves room for a different conclusion to be discovered.

Certainty is a very big word to any scientist.

Those that confine scientific conclusions to specific parameters and don't leave any room for thinking outside the box I think aren't dealing in science as much as they are dealing in dogma.

"Outside the box" is an awful large, unspecific and generic term of what?
Science is always testing their conclusions over and over and over again, especially in the medical field with vacinnes and medicine.
Dogma is religion and beliefs that you can never test with the scientific method.

Outside the box is often looking at evidence, and coming to a conclusion that flies in the face of generally accepted ideas, ideas often formed from events outside of science.

One example is the shunning of the idea of catastophes in geological circles after the religious of the day tried to use Biblical catastrophes to explain all the formations. J. Harlan Bretz had to fight for decades to get geologist of that time to look, on the ground, at his evidence. Now we see evidence for occasional catastrophes, impacts, volcanics intruding ocean clathrates and fossil fuel deposits, in many geological eras.

 

[antagon]

i said it originally, and presumed that we were talking about the original reference to luck:

this is how a conclusion that luck was responsible for something is not scientific.

the caveat about conclusions is important. that's what the box envelops. the idea that the earth was round is a conclusion within the box. the idea that it is flat does comes from outside the box.

But once the 'flat Earth' concept was all that there was inside the box. It was not until somebody was willing to think outside the box that science was able to move away from that conclusion. That is why I say science NEVER forms a conclusion that is wholly contained within specific parameters, but always leaves room for a different conclusion to be discovered.

Certainty is a very big word to any scientist.

Those that confine scientific conclusions to specific parameters and don't leave any room for thinking outside the box I think aren't dealing in science as much as they are dealing in dogma.

the box which applies to science is the scientific method and all of the attachment to empirical inquiry and conclusions made on such a basis. this was not the method used by the period which i describe as being outside the box or mythology.

i've made this characterization on the basis that preceding such philosophies in the classical period which began to establish the confines of scientific evidence and conclusion - the box - there were no confines to plausibility.

you've made the mistake that it requires open minded imagination to conclude that the world in not flat. i argue that disciplined attachment to observations and pythagorean math brought it about.

the latter argument aligns with history.

 

[antagon]

Outside the box is often looking at evidence, and coming to a conclusion that flies in the face of generally accepted ideas, ideas often formed from events outside of science.

One example is the shunning of the idea of catastophes in geological circles after the religious of the day tried to use Biblical catastrophes to explain all the formations. J. Harlan Bretz had to fight for decades to get geologist of that time to look, on the ground, at his evidence. Now we see evidence for occasional catastrophes, impacts, volcanics intruding ocean clathrates and fossil fuel deposits, in many geological eras.

it is my contention that there is no box for 'pedestrian' conjectures. science prescribes a box which insists on analysis of an observation with the aim to draw conclusions confined to that box. that is to say only conclusions arising from empirical inquiry.

i would characterize the referenced geologist who ignores evidence as aiming to conclude outside these empirical confines outside the box constraining scientific inquiry.

 

[Foxfyre]

i said it originally, and presumed that we were talking about the original reference to luck:

the caveat about conclusions is important. that's what the box envelops. the idea that the earth was round is a conclusion within the box. the idea that it is flat does comes from outside the box.

But once the 'flat Earth' concept was all that there was inside the box. It was not until somebody was willing to think outside the box that science was able to move away from that conclusion. That is why I say science NEVER forms a conclusion that is wholly contained within specific parameters, but always leaves room for a different conclusion to be discovered.

Certainty is a very big word to any scientist.

Those that confine scientific conclusions to specific parameters and don't leave any room for thinking outside the box I think aren't dealing in science as much as they are dealing in dogma.

the box which applies to science is the scientific method and all of the attachment to empirical inquiry and conclusions made on such a basis. this was not the method used by the period which i describe as being outside the box or mythology.

i've made this characterization on the basis that preceding such philosophies in the classical period which began to establish the confines of scientific evidence and conclusion - the box - there were no confines to plausibility.

you've made the mistake that it requires open minded imagination to conclude that the world in not flat. i argue that disciplined attachment to observations and pythagorean math brought it about.

the latter argument aligns with history.

And you seem to think that the 'scientific methods' we have now will never be different than they are now. I think you're very wrong and these will continue to evolve beyond their current box because there are still people who don't confine knowledge and all there is to know within any confines of any kind.

But again we are moving into one of those circular arguments that won't go anywhere, so let's just agree to disagree on this now so that we don't bore everybody else to death on this.

 

[antagon]

you simply sound like a non-scientist micharacterizing what science is and what scientists are asked to do in their professions. this is a hobby of yours and your testimony to access to science students reinforces why i fear sending my progeny to public schools.