DesideriScuri
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quote:
ORIGINAL: samboct
This argument is based on a common misperception about science- that a hypothesis has to be correct. It doesn't- you just need to have one.
The Propperian method in science-
1) Construct a hypothesis. (What you think is going to happen.)
2) Design an experiment to test the hypothesis.
3) Do the experiment.
4) Answer the question- is the hypothesis correct?
5) If yes, move on to the next problem. If no, formulate new hypothesis and iterate. Note that these are essentially the same steps. Hence- it doesn't matter whether or not the hypothesis is correct- if done correctly- you'll still get a useful answer.
Science is not the same as building a house- you don't need a strong foundation- what you need is an open mind.
another aphorism in science- Research is what happens based on the rubble of failed experiments.....
It's true- most real progress in science happens when the experiment doesn't come up with the expected result- whether it's Michaelson-Morley which disproved the concept of the aether, Rutherford showing that gold foil could deflect electrons, or that damn lying monk Mendel who since he couldn't explain mutations- just discarded some of his results....aka "fudged the data".
A much larger problem in science today is the publication of too many crappy papers- which is a real problem. Consider that there really hasn't been much change in the total number of researchers in the US in the past several decades- wouldn't be surprised if there's been a decline. Yet the number of journals and consequent publications have gone up several fold. This has been driven by money- publishing houses like Elsevier have figured out how to make money in academic journals which used to be a sleepy backwater of publishing and which may have been a loss leader. Now subscriptions to arcane journals cost thousands of dollars per year and the publishers often charge authors a per page charge to be included! Plus, editing is considered an academic feather in the cap- so they don't have to pay editors either! The publishers don't really pay for much except sending a sales force out.
Academic researchers are faced with the challenge of "publish or perish"- so they want to publish-gee what a surprise...And tenure committees have gotten used to CVs that have hundreds of papers on them. When I was doing my thesis work- the average number of papers per thesis was.....one (or less). This meant that many theses never got a publication out of the work- although some theses did get several papers. Postdocs did a bit better- but my rule of thumb was basically a paper required 1-2 years of research. Clearly now- some folks are in the mindset of 1-2 months- and time for a paper. Well, researchers haven't gotten wildly better since I was in school- which means that a lot of the stuff being published is junk. And even back in my day- probably 3/4ths or higher was crappy work that shouldn't have been published. So science is being hit with a double whammy- researchers are spending too much time writing up crap-and not doing useful experiments- and the rest of us have to plow through more of this crap to find the nuggets of gold. In short- the signal to noise level is science publications is going down- and this is not a good thing....
Yet another example of too much competition being a problem....
Sam
Please note that I didn't state the research was a failure, but that it might not support the hypothesis because of the underlying research. Research only fails when a hypothesis isn't truly tested by the research done. If you are basing your hypothesis on results of research that aren't valid, the odds of your research accurately testing your hypothesis are lessened.
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
The whole point of research, though, is that the results will either support or not support the hypothesis due to the experimental variable. If research fails because of underlying research, what did that research say about the experimental variable? It's not necessarily any sort of commentary on it. And, that's the problem.
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RE: stop standing in the way of science - 
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