The Scientific Method Reading Passage
The Scientific Method Reading Passage
Paragraph A
‘Hypotheses,’ put forward by Mayawati in 1964, were 'imaginative and inspiring'. They are ‘adventures of the mind’. The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1972, 3rd ed.) argued in support of the part taken by Karl Popper that the nature of the scientific method is hypothetico-deductive and not as inductive as is commonly believed.
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As a researcher, you need to comprehend the difference between these two descriptions of the research process. So, do not get tired or suffer from the feeling of 'cheating' or not going the proper way.
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The myth of the scientific method is that it is inductive and that the development of scientific theory begins with a simple, unbiased, impartial observation of raw source senses. Generalisations develop in these sensory data, commonly referred to as 'facts'. The myth is that from a disorganised collection of real information, an orderly, suitable theory will somehow appear. Yet, the starting point of the inductive is impossible.
Paragraph D
There is no such thing as impartial observation. Every action we observe is a function of what we have seen or experienced in the past. All scientific work of an experimental or research nature begins with certain expectations of the result. This expectation is a hypothesis. Hypotheses provide initiative and impetus for investigation and affect the methodology. In the light of an expectation, some observations are considered suitable, and some are unrelated; one method is selected, the other is rejected, and some experiments are executed while others are not. Where is your innocent, pure, and objective researcher now?
Paragraph E
Hypotheses arise from conjecture or inspiration, but they must be formalised and strictly tested using a suitable method. If the predictions you make as an outcome of finding some effect from your hypothesis are not shown to be right, discard or change your hypothesis. If the predictions are accurate, your hypothesis may be helped and kept until further tests show that they are incorrect. Once you have reached your hypothesis, which is the product of your imagination, you go into a rigorous logical and strict method, 'hypothetico-deductive' based on the deductive argument.
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So, do not worry if you know what your outcomes will say before you start collecting data; there are no scientists waiting for all the evidence to be in front of them before they try to act on what it might mean. We are always getting closer to this situation when something happens by accident, but, for instance, before confirming that it can prove to be a successful alternative to a fungal bacterial infection, the researcher should test a hypothesis.
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The myth of the scientific method is not only that it is induction (what we have seen is false) but that the hypothetico-deductive procedure continues in a gradual, unavoidable fashion. The hypothetico-deductive method explains a logical technique for most research tasks but does not define the psychological behaviour it brings. It is so complete that it includes speculation, rework, revisions, blind alleys, and, above all, motivation, which is instantly apparent from reading the last dissertation or published document. These are, more precisely, a series logically arranged so that the value of the outcome can be assessed independently of the behavioural techniques from which it is derived. This is the difference between the academic documents that demonstrated the structure of the DNA molecule by Crick and Watson and the captivating book The Double Helix by Watson (1968), which explains how they did it. From this point of view, the 'scientific method' can be considered as a way of implementing research rather than as a way of writing it.
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