How science works

The enormous success of science and technology has a very simple but powerful basis in the rigorous application of the scientific method. This method depends on scientific observations in order to make statements about our world.

Because the details of these observations can be so dauntingly complex, it will come as a surprise to some that the heart of the scientific method is not unlike the way that many children naturally explore the world: they observe, then they ask questions about their observations and use logic (as they understand it) to answer their questions. They stop asking a question and move on to the next, once several independent sources lead to similar answers.

Scientific observations

Scientific observations are what many would call a reliable observation. In order to qualify as scientific, an observation has to be

• reproducible and
• independent from the observer.

Since reliability is of such utmost importance, scientists have developed ways to document observations to make them accessible to other people. Their primary venue for presenting such observations are articles in research journals. Scientists have also developed various means of testing claims about the reliability of observations and they can get very annoyed, if someone does not adhere to these standards (this is the part, where children still need to do their growing up). The main tools that are used to test the reliability of claims often come from statistics and frequently compute a probability that a given observation was made entirely by chance. If this probability is low enough, then scientists would accept the observation as significant.

Scientific hypotheses

While popular use of the word 'hypothesis' is often not different from 'speculation', these two words denote different things in the scientific world. To qualify as a hypothesis, an idea has to

• explain some significant observations
• be specific enough to be falsifiable
• be logical.

Each hypothesis starts as an idea about how certain things really are. If it is to be of any scientific value, then it has to propose a testable and logical explanation about something that has previously not been understood. The falsifiability is important, as untestable hypotheses are unsatisfactory for a critic. The critic could always argue that everything is entirely opposite to the hypothesis he critizises, but since there is no way of testing both claims, there cannot be a resolution of the debate. With testable hypotheses, however, critics can be convinced - at least in principle.

Scientific theories

Once a hypothesis has been found to predict observations accurately many times, it slowly gains the status as a theory. Again the popular use of the word is very different.

• Popular: "Theory is unreliable and I don't need to care about it, since it does not work in practice."
• Scientific: "A good theory predicts what happens in practice and is therefore extremely reliable."

It is important to learn about these different uses of these key words, else non-scientists and scientists will not be able to find any common language. It would be a grave mistake to think that it is just a 'theory' if a scientific theory predicts e.g. flooding of New York due to global warming.

Scientific progress

For scientists, progress is made, when new observations are documented or when new hypotheses are proposed or when old hypotheses are confirmed or invalidated. In order to watch over the integrity of this process, scientists critically review each other's articles in order to reduce the number of errors that end up in the scientific literature.

The scientific method is used by many thousands of scientists around the world and works extremely well. The reason why scientific fraud - when it happens - makes such popular headlines, is mainly due to the fact that scientists esteem accuracy so much that they take violations of this ethos very serious.

Limitations

The description above is obviously tuned towards natural sciences and the scientific method has some limitations when exploring reality, especially in the personal realm. That does not weaken its conclusions about topics that fall within the limits of scientific explorability.