Seattle Treatment Education Project: STEP Perspective - Volume 4, Number 3 - October 1992
Robert Nielsen

A LITTLE HISTORY. Science, as a human activity, is relatively new. Cave men did not do science. Various alchemists and sorcerers and wizards played around on the fringes of it, but never really did it. Real science, as we know it, probably began with astronomy. We know that people--even very primitive people--looked at the sky for thousands of years, but they weren't astronomers. The science of astronomy began when people observed the stars and planets and began to have an understanding of what they were seeing. We know that this happened in Egyptian civilization, in the Orient, among the Incas, and many other places, too. Some people observed the heavens sufficiently well to be able to make measurements and accurate predictions about where the stars and planets would be at a given time. (Predicting eclipses became a ticket to wealth and power.) Some even developed a concept of how they thought the stars and planets were arranged. Of course, people had been developing concepts about how the stars and planets were arranged for thousands of years (such as that the Earth was on the back of a turtle who crawls under the sun, etc.), but science began when people started describing the heavens based on careful observations and measurements of the real, physical world around them, and reaching conclusions that approximated the truth. And what is the truth? That too, is approached through the scientific method.

THE BASICS. Here are the elements that really define the scientific method: Observation. Experiment. Measurement. Analysis. Hypothesis. Conclusion. These actions do not take place in any special order, except that it is rather fatuous to reach a conclusion before doing some of the other things in an orderly way. Observation. All scientific investigation begins with observation. We notice something and become curious about it. Suppose we observe that our sister Mary became ill after eating a lobster dinner. If we jump immediately to a conclusion (Mary's lobster was bad) we haven't done any science (there is a possibility that Mary has a shellfish allergy, and there was nothing wrong with the lobster at all). The scientific way to resolve Mary's illness is to test the lobster. (There are many ways to do this that are too complicated to get into here; just remember that the tests themselves are a result of previous, disciplined scientific investigation that give us reliable tools to uncover poisons, bacteria, or anything else that might be wrong with the lobster.) It is also important to determine if Mary has some condition that may have led to her illness. Testing the lobster and testing Mary are part of doing an experiment.

Experiment. This word reminds most people of the scientist's laboratory in the movies with test tubes and beakers and brains in jars. That's certainly part of experimentation, but only a small part. Experiments come in a stupendous variety of forms. Blowing up a nuclear bomb can be an experiment as can raising generations of fruit flies to determine their genetic characteristics. Sometimes the most difficult part of doing an experiment is thinking it up in the first place, or inventing an experimental framework that has a good probability of giving useful results. Suppose a scientist observes something and develops a theory (a hypothesis) about it. He has a suspicion that thing A, B, or C might be factors, so he has to invent experiments to prove some things true or rule other things out. Getting back to Mary's lobster, for example, the scientist might want to find out if the lobster: A) had been stored at too warm a temperature and had developed bacteria as a result; B) had lived in polluted water and was contaminated because of that; or C) had been laced with poison by Mary's ex-lover. Each of these theories would require different tests or experiments to explore, and also require some previous scientific knowledge. Somebody would have had to discover that bacteria were a cause of disease, and the scientist would need to have (or invent) some method of detecting and identifying various poisons. Doing accurate experiments leads us to the next important part of scientific investigation: measurement.

Measurement. Some people feel that this is the most boring part of science, but it is also one of the most important. General information is useless unless we have an accurate way to determine "how much" and "how many." Testing Mary's lobster for bacteria is sure to reveal some because we know from previous study that they are found everywhere. The real question is how much bacteria? What kind of bacteria? Enough to cause death? How much bacteria does it take to kill a person? Does it take more to kill a heavy person than a slight one? The question of how much and how many applies to virtually every branch of science. Primitive man learned that he could get metal by heating certain rocks, but real scientists determined how much heat it took to melt various kinds of metals, and how those metals could be combined into new, stronger alloys. Accurate measurement requires a great deal more than human senses. To help do this job, scientists have developed a wide variety of measuring and viewing instruments. There are microscopes, of course, and even electronic microscopes that permit the viewing of a single atom. There are sensitive scales for weighing things or determining how much force it takes to pull things apart. And when it is important to measure something again and again and compare the measurements over time, scientists have developed automated tools. For example, since it has become important to measure T-cells, there are now machines that do this automatically and print out a number. Previously this was done by actually having a human being count T-cells in a small area on a slide in a microscope. Sometimes measurement is extremely difficult because the thing you want to measure is so small or so elusive or has an extremely short life. In this case, scientists develop means of measuring by evidence. They literally look for traces or the remainders of things. In a way this is like a hunter looking for elk by following a trail of elk droppings. Some atomic particles can only be detected by the trail they leave as they pass by. Or, some viruses can only be detected by the antibodies that an organism produces in response to a virus; a scientist infers that a person or animal has the virus because of something the body does as a result of the virus; the scientist can't detect the virus itself at all.

So, measurement--finding out what a thing is and how much of it there is--is a fundamental part of the scientific method.

ANALYSIS. In the strictest sense, analysis means taking apart, separating a thing into pieces so that you can see what it's made of. In the scientific method, analysis can refer to a part of the experiment where the nature of a thing is being uncovered, and it can also refer to what gets done to the results of an experiment. The scientist carefully evaluates what he has learned and analyzes it in respect to previous discoveries and what he already knows. Sometimes analysis consists of organizing tables of numbers (measurements) and deciding what they mean. Sometimes the technique of statistical analysis is used to project what an outcome might be from a small experimental sample. This is where we see the classic studies of laboratory rats, when a test animal is given a small amount of a substance, and based on its reaction, a scientist tries to predict what the result will be in a human being. Analysis is a tool, a technique, and it is enormously helpful, though by no means perfect. It is subject to interpretation. It is affected by further experiments and new hypotheses.

A few years ago, a particular kind of artificial sweetener for soft drinks was banned because it caused cancer in laboratory rats. Later research and analysis has shown that human beings could never consume enough soft drinks to get as much of this chemical into their bodies as it took to produce cancer in the rats (when compared by the amount of chemical in relation to the weight of the creature taking it in). Even further research has shown that the rats appear to get cancer from this chemical because of the particular way their livers function. Human livers don't work the same way as rat livers, so humans probably won't get cancer from this chemical anyway. But, acting on the best evidence at the time, the government banned the chemical to try to prevent the possibility of inducing cancer in people. Analysis is a continuing process that serves to refine and improve the scientific method. It leads to the development of ever more useful hypotheses.

HYPOTHESES. A hypothesis is an idea, a proposed method of explaining why something happens or happened. People who love mystery stories are familiar with hypotheses because they are a favorite tool of detectives attempting to explain the details of a crime. Scientific researchers must develop hypotheses as a basis for planning their investigations. Sometimes the hypothesis is the starting point for an investigation (do whales beach themselves because of pollution in the ocean?); other times the hypothesis is the result of previous research (is it possible that certain cells die not because they are infected, but because the infection makes them susceptible to another agent?). In any case, a clearly stated hypothesis is an essential part of the scientific method. Proving or disproving it is a valuable step in scientific progress.

CONCLUSION. This is what every scientist is looking for; a clear, provable statement that helps identify and define a complex problem. Example: penicillin cures syphilis (until a penicillin-resistant strain comes along); adding just the right amount of carbon makes a stronger steel; increasing combustion temperatures inside a jet engine gives greater fuel economy. Conclusions that aren't provable don't stand up to the rigors of the scientific method. Remember the news stories about cold atomic fusion? Since nobody else could duplicate the results, this idea is now considered to be a hoax. Undoubtedly, something was happening in that scientist's test tube. It just wasn't the phenomenon he claimed it was. By the way, this incident doesn't prove that cold fusion is impossible. It just illustrates that some people go overboard with claims before really doing their homework.

Beware of oversimplification. We live in a world with a sufficient depth of scientific knowledge that not everything is understandable to everyone. Any person can understand a great deal, but it takes work and study. It doesn't happen from reading one article, and it absolutely doesn't happen from reading only headlines.

It is also important to realize that it is quite simple for people to repair or improve machines or computers because those devices were created by human beings. Because we invented them, we can understand them, and they really don't present much of a problem. However, when a doctor is trying to cure disease, he has a much more difficult task before him. He is trying to repair a mechanism for which the manual is only partially written, the blueprints are obscure and stained, and the principles of operation are not completely understood. There is a tremendous difference between the field of engineering, where known scientific principles are applied to build useful devices, and the field of medicine, where scientific knowledge is continually expanding, extremely complex mechanisms interact to cause illness, and doctors and researchers strive to unravel monumentally difficult problems.

Science is not one thing. It is an extraordinarily rich combination of techniques and knowledge, educated guesses and luck. And the one thing that brings uniformity and validity to it is the scientific method.
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Copyright © 1992 - Seattle Treatment Education Project (STEP) - All rights reserved. Noncommercial reproduction is encouraged. STEP is published four times a year by the Seattle Treatment Education Project, 127 Broadway East, 3rd Floor, Seattle, WA 98102.    Email: step100@aol.com  STEP web page