Talk:Scientific method/Archive 19

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Hello! So my edits from yesterday got reverted, which I guess I’m not entirely surprised by, since it involved deleting some text – but in any case, here is my explanation. I’ve tried to go in order for ease of reading (although that didn't entirely work out since my edits included some rearrangement), and I hope this isn’t too long to read.

Insertion: I decided after writing my justification to undo the reversion, mainly based on the misuse of the word "theory" (see below). Please let me know if this is not appropriate. If somebody reverses this, please leave the changes that involve correcting this particular mistake. Arc de Ciel (talk) 21:52, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Onto my justifications - starting with the first sentence:

-“In the same way that Alhazen sought truth during his pioneering studies in optics 1000 years ago, arriving at the truth is the goal of a scientific inquiry.”

I removed this sentence. I object mainly to the second clause, “arriving at the truth is the goal of a scientific inquiry.” The goal of a scientific inquiry is to produce models of reality with predictive capability, and the text that I used reflects that. The actual words were adapted from the definition on the page Science.

It is possible that scientific knowledge represents truth (the kind of Truth with a capital T that I would think is evoked when such a charged word is used), but we cannot assume that except in a colloquial sense.

I also brought forward some text from below, about the scientific community and how science produces knowledge. It was hard for me to see how this paragraph fit under the heading “Certainty and myth,” which is where it was. (Of course, I am willing to hear explanations.)

Next (and most importantly): the text uses the word “theory” in a scientifically inappropriate way – specifically, where it should use “hypothesis” or “model.” I apologize for the bolding, but this is incredibly important, and if any part of my edits gets kept, this would be the part.

For example:

-“theories become accepted by a scientific community as evidence for the theory is presented, and as presumptions that are inconsistent with the evidence are falsified.”

A scientific model is not considered a theory until it has been accepted by at least a significant fraction of the scientific community. It is possible that the author of this had string theory in mind, but this is a special case due to (among other things) the fact that it is extremely difficult to test it by experiment.

-“Most scientific theories don't result in large changes in human understanding.”

There aren’t actually that many theories in existence – theory of gravity, theory of evolution, atomic theory, cell theory, etc, and I cannot think of any for which this statement is true. In this case, I replaced the term “scientific theories” with “experimental results,” for which the statement is undeniably true, and which I think is a more important point that people should understand in any case. If the intent of this statement was to say “most putative scientific theories do not end up becoming accepted,” I agree with that statement as well, but that is not what the text says as written. I could also agree with the use of “scientific models” instead of “theories” (though that is more contestable), or that the full strength of theories is often not completely appreciated for some time, but these are also different statements.

-“Theories vary in the extent to which they have been experimentally tested and for how long, and in their acceptance in the scientific community.”

This is trivially true – but again, (assuming we are not talking about theories that were previously held but are now rejected), they have all been tested rigorously and for a long time, and enjoy a very high level of acceptance in the scientific community. If they did not have these properties, they would not be called theories. To be honest, when I read it my first thought was that this is the kind of statement used by an evolution- or global-warming-denier (though of course I AGF, and I have no idea who it was who added the statement anyways).

Continuing on, in the section “Beliefs and biases”: The most important relation of beliefs and biases to the scientific method is that science tries to eliminate them, to be objective in interpreting experimental results, etc. As a result, I moved this to the top of the section. The rest of the section as written essentially comprises examples (namely confirmation bias) which help to make this point, so I made this more explicit.

I also removed some redundant text, like the following:

-“This image illustrates Ludwik Fleck's suggestion that people be cautious lest they observe what is not so; people often observe what they expect to observe. Until shown otherwise; their beliefs affect their observations (and, therefore, any subsequent actions which depend on those observations, in a self-fulfilling prophecy)”

This is a restatement of confirmation bias, which has already been explained. Nevertheless, I incorporated some of this wording (“people observe what they expect to observe”) into my new first paragraph for this section. (I would also point out that “Until shown otherwise” followed by a semicolon is a sentence fragment.)

This next part is not precisely a restatement, but I don’t think it is useful in helping to describe the scientific method:

-“Researchers have often noted that first observations are often somewhat imprecise, whereas the second and third were "adjusted to the facts". Eventually, factors such as openness to experience, self-esteem, time, and comfort can produce a readiness for new perception.”

The first sentence I think is a reasonable to include (and it is in the self-correcting nature of science to expose such things, after all), but I think it’s just a logical example of confirmation bias. I also object to the use of the weasel words “researchers” and “many,” even if they are in the source. The second sentence is extremely vague and seems to basically state that people are sometimes able to overcome confirmation bias.

(That was the last of the sentences that I removed. The rest is rearrangement and clarification.)

(As a side note, I also ended up removing the names of particular authors from my discussion. They’re redundant as long as the statement is sourced normally, and furthermore, the person who promoted a particular idea is not relevant to the merits of the idea itself. I suppose this may be a convention in certain areas of the humanities, but one that I have never understood.

Continuing:

I also felt that the short discussion on myths fit better under “Beliefs,” especially since I was expanding the rest of the section it was in. To correspond to this, I then renamed the section “Scientific certainty.” I then noticed that a) scientific certainty achieved through the scientific method is more central to this topic than the way the scientific method guards against biases and b) the beginning of the “Certainty” section follows well right after the introductory section, so I reversed the order of the two sections.

With regards to the “myths” discussion, I also relocated the unrelated “theories become accepted...” statement, as I already discussed above. I thought that the “a posteriori versus a priori” statement was also unnecessary, but I decided someone might think it is an important point so I moved it with the rest of the paragraph.

I also moved the statement about the appeal to novelty (which was not mentioned by name) – I think this is appropriate even without the section name change, since it is one of the biases that science attempts to guard against.

For the “Certainty” section, I then made a couple of further changes in addition to the ones already discussed:

-I added more information to the first paragraph about how theories are modified over time, thus increasing scientific certainty (as the predictive power of theories increases).

-I then added more detail to the third (now second) paragraph, and clarified the statement “the body of independent, unconnected, scientific observation can diminish,” which I felt could be interpreted as science having the ability to reduce in knowledge over time. Of course, this is not the case, and I assumed that it was referring to the unification of scientific knowledge by more and more powerful theories.

-I then wrote a new paragraph describing how theories unify. This was based around the core idea from the Goldhaber quote, although I didn’t think that the quote itself was useful so I just restated it differently (although I now notice that I didn’t put another citation in, which I think I should have). I also included a couple of sentences describing one of the best-known examples of explanatory power and unification.

Finally, I decided to change the title of the entire section, from “Truth and belief” to “Scientific inquiry.” I’m not attached to this particular change one way or the other, but I felt that it was a better description given the changes that I had made (and possibly even without them). I think that if someone wants to discuss “truth,” it deserves its own section, perhaps under “Philosophy and sociology of science.” Some of the material currently here could fit under that section (perhaps the comparison to myths, for example), but I don’t think the rest of it would be suitable.

I think I may have skipped one or two minor things that I did, so please let me know if you’d like me to discuss those as well. I didn’t think that my edits would be controversial in any way, but I suppose that was not the case. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 21:32, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Arc de Ciel, thank you being bold. The edit pattern we are exemplifying is called 'BRD'

B (Wikipedia:Be_bold)

R (revert -- while adhering to the 3RR rule)

D (discuss= Wikipedia:Editing_policy#Talking_and_editing)

Right now, the article shows two conflicting points of view simultaneously, a contradiction which needs to be cleaned up. My first problem is that the previous editorial consensus was that Scientific Certainty is a myth. Christiaan Huygens was the first to say this. But right now, the headings proclaim otherwise, by seeming to claim Certainty. We should discuss this, and arrive at consensus on the talk page, first. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 00:31, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Ancheta about certainty, which people usually take to mean "absolute certainty." This article is for the general public.
Replacing the idea of truth with that of predictive power merely veils the idea of truth which is in the idea of predictive power for example. I.e. predictive statements coming true or turning out false and thereby tending to support or overturn hypotheses, i.e., tending to support that a hypothesis is true or show that it is false. We owe it to the general reader to say things as plainly as we can; the idea that scientists do not aim at truth, and do not think of themselves as aiming at truth, requires empirical support that I don't think will be forthcoming.
The explanatory hypothesis can't just point to a candidate cause, it needs at least a mini-theory of the causal mechanism, the opportunity, etc. Under what common usage of the word "theory" is it, that the theory of continental drift was not even a theory until it became one by virtue of winning some acceptance in the mid-20th Century? When a "model" or theory dependably generates true predictions rather than false ones, we say that the theory is true, or at least near the truth; it consists of an account, a representation, of things happening which we consider to be more or less accurate, from which account we deduce predictions, not as from an oracle, but as from a picture of real things as they are understood. The Tetrast (talk) 01:25, 7 May 2012 (UTC).

I’m definitely willing to enter a discussion. :-) This is a reply I composed to Ancheta before I saw the next reply – I’ll have time to read and reply to Tetrast a little later.

I agree that science cannot be “certain” in the sense of “proven,” like for logical truths – I would say that is an inevitable result of a process using empirical data, and I do not intend to imply otherwise. I have no objection to changing the subheading “Scientific certainty” to, for example, “Certainty and science” or “Scientific uncertainty”. (When I hear the term “scientific certainty,” I think of “the level of certainty afforded by science” rather than “science can be certain about things.” I would suggest that the statement “no theory can ever be considered completely certain” should be sufficient to clarify any misunderstanding, but I think I understand your concern. Is this the conflict you were referring to?)

Ironically, this is actually one of the reasons that I didn’t like the use of the word “truth” (for example, in the previous opening sentence to this section) which I would say implies certainty. I don’t think many scientists would say that they are “seeking truth” – as I mentioned above, the goal is predictive power. (Scientific modelling) The concept of "truth" is simply not very useful to a scientist, partially because it can be interpreted in so many different ways.

I think one point that I felt was missing was that scientific knowledge can still reach a level where we can be very confident that our predictions are correct (so long as we accept the basic assumptions of science that reality exists, etc). More generally, scientific knowledge has a range of certainty, and is able to approach although not reach a probability of 1. So for example, we can be “certain for all intents and purposes” that if we drop an object, then ceteris paribus it will fall according to the Theory of Gravity, although I would not personally use the word “certain” for that without qualification. Arc de Ciel (talk) 02:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

There are several competing factors in play here.

One factor is Aristotle's long shadow. Truth is a goal for most scientists, and this article rests on it. But that does not mean that Truth means only Aristotle's Correspondence theory of truth.
A second factor is the search for Certainty. Imre Lakatos said of himself, '[his] search for certainty has restricted him to the boring problems and has blinded him to the interesting problems' (my paraphrase from Proofs and Refutations).
A third factor is the use of models (in the twentieth century) as opposed to laws (which date back to the Roman Lex, and which lasted for thousands of years, up to the nineteenth century). When a statement is a model, then our attention shifts to the assumptions which that model rests upon, as well put by Goldhaber and also by Brody (both cited in the article). Thus, a model need no longer be categorically true, but only probable (as Huygens put it).
A fourth factor is the problematic use of 'theory', as in ptolemaic theory, which gives reliable, repeatable predictions (a theory with predictive capability, just the sort of thing that Alhazen criticized as not true, but in fact error. Alhazen did not criticize Ptolemy for making errors, since that is our lot as human beings, but that Alhazen still sought the truth, by using logic, geometrical proof, autopsies of cadavers, and other experimentation.
Ludwik Fleck pioneered the idea that scientific facts are socially constructed. The article on truth is leading up to it, step by step, in a pragmatic / constructivist way.

--Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 03:59, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Apologies again for the length of this response – I’m trying to make sure I get my ideas across coherently. Please let me know if you would like me to summarize.

First, on the subject of “truth” – I have always assumed that this means something which is absolute (that is, unchanging unless the state of nature itself changes), and this seems to be the important distinction here. (Also, if “truth” is not absolute, I don’t see how you could say that the weaker word “certain” is itself absolute.) The other thing is that even if we agree, the general public may not. For example, many religions claim some form of “truth” but this is not related to scientific knowledge. Again, my solution is simply to avoid using the word, which I don’t really think is necessary in a discussion about the scientific method in any case. (This is also the point where I would usually call rationalist taboo on the word if we were going to keep discussing it :-) )

The scientific method guarantees predictive power – it is the major criterion on which scientific theories are evaluated. To say that the predictive power then guarantees (or approximates) truth is an additional step which (if it is included) I think should be clear. Personally, I do not think the second step is necessarily justified (I think you need to assume it). Predictive statements coming out true or false are evidence for or against the hypothesis, not evidence for truth or falsity as you suggest. The more results come out in one direction, the stronger the confidence in the conclusion; however, any conclusion could still be affected by mistakes, uncontrolled variables, a deeper theory that has not yet been discovered, etc.

As an extreme example, if we are living in a simulation then no current scientific knowledge would be true (unless it applied to the higher universe by coincidence), but its predictive power would be intact. Similarly, if general relativity were close to the “truth,” then Newtonian mechanics and the Flat Earth model would look just as wrong if the metric we used was not prediction. If you are willing to define truth as “high but not absolute certainty,” then I would go along, but I am not sure that this is a well-accepted viewpoint or would be taken as such by most readers. I would suggest that this is why scientists tend to talk about “scientific knowledge” or “scientific fact” rather than “scientific truth.”

On continental drift: fair example. Many putative theories (especially those initially proposed by a single person or group) go through a period after being proposed where some refer to it as a theory and others as not, partially because of different people’s varying opinions about the strength of the evidence, and also a tendency to describe one’s work to be as important as possible. I will point out that at least some people still cited continental drift as a hypothesis in the early 1960s – for example, 1 and 2. This should not happen if the definition did not contain at least some component related to the strength of the evidence. Another source which claims that the hypothesis became a theory in the 1960s is here (search the phrase “continental drift”).

I would not object to a description of this being included. I also agree that part of the problem is that the terms themselves (theory, etc) are not well defined.

Now, a response to Ancheta specifically: could you describe what you think the roles of the competing factors are? (how they are in competition, how they are relevant to the article, how my changes may have affected them) - also, are there any specific changes you would propose to make?

I've made a few comments, but I’m not sure what you are trying to communicate overall.

1. I would like to think that the results of my experiments reflect some underlying truth to reality, but I really have no way to know that, and the scientific method cannot tell me. Personally, my main motivation comes from doing things that will save and improve the lives of other people.

3. When we have a scientific model, our attention generally first shifts to the predictions made by that model and how they might be tested. If the model’s predictions are validated by experiment, then we may start building on that knowledge or looking for connections to different models. Since science is iterative, any assumptions that go into a model are generally ones that have already been demonstrated by the underlying theories – the existence of further assumptions may reflect a poor model, unless evidence is specifically given to show that they are reasonable. Secondly, it is not just that a model “need no longer be categorically true” – it cannot be (because science cannot be absolutely certain). Or at least, it may be exactly true but we can never know this fact with absolute certainty.

4. I am not sure that Ptolemy’s theory would be called a “theory” by today’s standards. As far as I am aware, it was not open to possible disproof – it predicted only one thing (planetary orbits) and was constructed in such a way that deviations from prediction could be “fixed” by postulating any number of additional epicycles. The scientific method did not have a chance to act, and when it did (mainly through increasing instrumental precision) his theory was falsified.

5. I’m not sure what “socially constructed” is supposed to mean. If it refers to the “social process of science” and the way that human interactions affect the scientific enterprise, I think that’s uncontroversial, but if it means something about reality (which scientific facts are about) not being objective, then it can be demonstrated false by experiment. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:44, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Arc de Ciel, thank you for clarifying your motivation.

It may seem obvious, but it needs to be said: truth is subjective to each observer (this was established first in economics, and has spread to the other sciences in turn). Our individual observations, actions, beliefs, and motivations are generally partial and not absolute. But an organizing theory can be disproven, if not fully proven. So when Alhazen demolished Ptolemy's theory, his own beliefs took several centuries and continents to propagate, until finally most of us are convinced that Ptolemy's theory is false. Alhazen's subject in this case was astronomy (the first science). I agree that it is politically perilous to announce the truth about something. Now we use a synonym: reality. However, reality has some system beneath it; for Fleck, the Wasserman test for blood samples was his reality. Today, of course, this particular test for syphilis is outdated, but Fleck's concept of using a procedure, to validate and to clarify a model, remains. It has taken decades for Fleck's concepts to take root and become accepted, first in the medical laboratory, then to the other sections of the community of scientists. ('social process of science') Then the general public can accept the viewpoint/model as authoritative, until the model falls apart. Thus the cost of maintaining a laboratory model becomes part of the cost of some scientific enterprise.

It is a hallmark of acceptance in a community when the word 'theory' is elided. It's simply the Big Bang, or General Relativity, when the community has accepted it. When a theory is accepted, we acknowledge the researcher who started it by attaching his name to it in our articles, equations, and laws. When an experimentalist disproves some theory, we note the researcher or the institution in our articles, and we conversely attach the name of the scientist, even to a failed theory. In today's world, of course, a belief system intrudes all too often. But today, a consensus of interested parties will generally win out (in a socially constructed process). For the general/consuming public, this suffices until the model falls apart.

A scientific method is most useful when something is unknown. The process of clarifying what is known and what is still unknown, forces us to reexamine our assumptions, which we can then state up front. For example, simple imaginative acts can finesse the need for a costly experiment by replacing it with a thought experiment. Similarly, strong philosophical beliefs can guide research. For example, Gerard 't Hooft's position that a black hole does not yet have a simple quantum mechanical formulation, to me, is very clear and instructive.

So now we are back to the predictive power of an explanation (read 'model' here, if you like). If the model fails, we reexamine its assumptions, costs, etc. If the cost is too great, that science must go dormant until a better idea (or model) emerges. That is where an attachment to truth comes into its own, and the cost of some experiment can even be brought up for funding by the general public, if the idea is appealing enough. What has happened is that a consensus explanation (even if only between two parties, or between two observers -- this is Max Born's idea) is progress.

Finally, this brings us to the problem of rigged experiments, where the outcome is known, before announcement of the prediction. This is where the cost of competition between groups of experimentalists justifies itself. The desire for Certainty, of course, would be the motivation for a rigged system, where a commitment to truth would suffice for a lone researcher. What I am raising, of course, are the ethical issues, such as conflict of interest.

Might I suggest that Scientific Certainty be rewritten in the article.

--Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:09, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure where this discussion is going. :-)

I think it should be clear from my previous posts that I do not consider it obvious that truth is subjective! I also notice that the page on "Truth" agrees with me – it states in the lead (final sentence) that there is at the least some controversy. I will just state that this illustrates again the point that the word is unnecessarily ambiguous.

I would agree with use of the phrasing “understand how reality works” or “understand the mechanisms underlying reality” to describe science (it seems that you might consider that equivalent, even though in my experience scientists would not). However, I will point out that not all science has this as its goal – curing diseases would be a counterexample.

I should also clarify that I don’t necessarily have an objection to most of the other uses of “truth” in the article. There are a couple of other cases where I would also have avoided it, but I am mainly concerned with the section that describes how the scientific method works. (When searching through, I was also somewhat amused by the dichotomy in the Philosophy section that would seem to categorize me as a postmodernist. I am not.) I also don't have any objection to the anecdote that Alhazen considered himself to be pursuing truth, even though I removed it. In fact, on thinking about it I think it's quite an interesting point to make.

Just a few points about science that address some things that you said.

1. It is not possible to disprove a theory in the same way that it is not possible to prove a theory - there is no absolute certainty in either direction.

2. While scientific ideas often take a while to gain acceptance, that does not mean that social forces play any major role in determining the final outcome - they can only speed or delay it. The final outcome is the one that has been shown by experimentation to have the most predictive power; science will not return to Ptolemy's model and decide that it is a better explanation than what we know today. Science moves in one direction only.

3. With regards to elision of the word “theory”: sorry, but that’s also incorrect. In fact, the two statements are not the same thing; dropping the word "theory" refers to one of the specific phenomena postulated and/or explained by the theory, whereas maintaining it refers to the entirety of the explanation and its predictions. For example, the Big Bang was a specific event which is predicted by the Big Bang theory - the theory itself involves lots of mathematics and makes many different predictions, including about what the universe looks like today.

4. If a model fails (in a non-trivial way) and is subsequently rejected, then we generally ignore that model except as a historical note. It is sometimes the case that a model is later revisited, but invariably that is because new data has come to light (without which it would have been unreasonable to accept the model), or because the model itself has been significantly updated.

There are a number of other things in your response that I could explain or otherwise address, but I’m trying to keep it short(er) and (please don’t take this the wrong way) I’m not able to see the relevance for much of it to the changes that I made. For example, I could see a paragraph or two about conflict of interest being included in the article, but it wasn’t included in the first place so I’m not sure why you’ve brought it up.

Continuing on,

-“Might I suggest that Scientific Certainty be rewritten in the article.”

(I assume that you now refer to the text rather than just the title, which we were discussing earlier.)

What part(s) do you feel are inappropriate, and/or what do you feel is missing? I have already tried to explain my justifications above.

The most important points I was trying to incorporate in this section were:

-Science cannot reach absolute certainty (which was already there before my changes, although I expanded on it)

-Nevertheless, scientific knowledge can reach different degrees of certainty, including very high degrees of certainty. (Contingent, of course, on the assumptions of science – reality existing, etc, as described in Science).

-The scientific process is iterative, and moves consistently towards unification and greater explanatory power.

With reference to our discussion thus far:

-I have said that I am not particularly attached to the title that I chose, and suggested a couple of alternatives to avoid the concern that you raised (and which I agree with). Another suggestion might be “Properties of the scientific method.”

-Another suggestion might be to keep the title but to begin the first paragraph with the (current) second sentence instead “No theory can ever be considered completely certain...” – I think this doesn’t flow as well, but I think either way maintains the core point.

-In fact, I’m not particularly attached to the organization either. For example, the first paragraph could be moved upwards to be the third paragraph under “Scientific inquiry,” or merged into the “Introduction to scientific method” section since they both relate to the same topic.

-As I described above – I have suggested the use of “an understanding of reality” or something similar to that in place of “truth," which seems to me to be a reasonable compromise.

I look forward to your reply. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:08, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I find Arc de Ciel's comments on truth quite unconvincing, for example:

Predictive statements coming out true or false are evidence for or against the hypothesis, not evidence for truth or falsity as you suggest.

Are you sure that you mean that? If evidence for or against a hypothesis is not evidence for or against the hypothesis's truth, then what other property or relation of the hypothesis is the evidence for or against? What is this non-truth favorability that a hypothesis has in light of evidence? Is it power, wealth, glamour, status? Is it beauty? But a beautiful or architecturally wonderful theory is still rejected if found false. You accept the idea of reality but not the idea of truth. Yet truth and reality are paired; hypotheses, theories, predictions, declarative statements, etc., aim to be true about the real. The idea of truth is not an unnecessary "second step," it's something that various things have in common and clarifies their kinship, so we use it to speak plainly to the general reader rather than engaging in bureaucratic euphemism and elision. One abstracts a common idea of what predictions, hypotheses, theories aim to be: and that is the idea of truth, not some other, or more general kind, of favorability or merit minimalistically alluded to by use of a fleeting preposition like "for" as in "evidence for"; nor should the forest which is truth be lost sight of amid the trees that are species of truth, even such key ones as predictive power; in a way truth is predictive power about potential investigatory results; a true statement truly predicts a common element of further truths that one will find, for example about the past, if one investigates far enough; and the meaning of each of those further truths is in its imaginable practical implications; yet truth is also correspondence; if you compare an accurate map to the mapped territory, you can see how the map and the territory have the same implications, lead to the same predictions; and one explains an account's or explanation's leading only to successful predictions as evidencing the account's or explanation's correspondence to that portion of the real which is its subject matter, for example the past. We need a forest word and that word is "truth". The idea that some religions might object to use of the word "truth" in regard to science goes, mutatis mutandis, for "reality", "certainty", and an awful lot else here; it's a red herring. It's also remarkable to say that "certainty" is a weaker word than "truth"; to assert that p is certain is stronger than to assert that p is true; it implies a stronger commitment by the speaker; it evokes the idea of doubts that have been overcome, or a probability that has been shown to be 100%. The Tetrast (talk) 00:34, 9 May 2012 (UTC).

I want to add a few things. Some times "truth" is used in a technical sense, as in formal logic, but usually in science it is not a term of art; even those who say they don't find it useful use it a lot. It's a common-sense word, with some of the vagueness natural to common sense - the true, the nearly true, the true enough, etc. Science is often said to be a development of common sense; it is more critical, and it increases in precision, but it starts from applying common sense. Phrasing away science's aim at truth obscures science's roots in the application of common sense and would lead this article down the path that too many Wikipedia articles have taken, written not as by knowledgeable editors for the general reader, but as if by (sometimes very) knowledgeable students for their professor, to let their professor know that they've absorbed the material, letting technical language eclipse the shared basis in common-sense understandings that makes articles more accessible to the general reader. There needs to be a balance - not between truth and falsehood, but between everyday English and technical, walking-on-glass language about science's aims that suits this or that school of thought or technical language that surrenders such words as "truth" in order to sidestep those schools' battles; one could surrender many important but nontechnical words that way.
And there's a bigger forest of which science is only a part, where the idea of truth-seeking helps distinguish science (and maths too, actually). This is another case of not missing the forest for the trees. When one says that science seeks to learn truths - seeks true representations that are bases for further true representations - one means that it is not primarily a game for seeking power, wealth, glamour, or status, and its method of settling questions is not the method that gives authority to power, wealth, etc. for settling questions; nor is it a ruling art, for truly knowing from what strengths one decides real things, though it's applicable there and has a planning dimension, nor is it a productive art, seeking to know truly by what means one handles and accomplishes real things, though it can be applied for such, as in medicine, and itself has a strong know-how dimension, nor is it an affective art, seeking to truly grasp in what (natural or artistic) effects or perfections one feels real things (subtle, complex etc.), though it is applicable there and has its own aesthetic dimension. The redoubled emphasis on truth means, that science seeks to truly know on what bases, what solid grounds of truth, one knows real things. The Tetrast (talk) 02:51, 9 May 2012 (UTC).

It is evidence for or against the ability of the hypothesis to make predictive statements in the future. Science is self-contained and recursive – it has no need for concepts not related to what we directly observe.

You appear to be trying to tell me what truth is. I do not “reject the idea of it,” although I might disagree with the sense (or parts thereof) in which you are using it. As I pointed out above, it seems quite clear that not everybody agrees with you (not even all philosophers). For example: see the lead of Truth. If you have a definition which can be easily determined by observation, universally agreed upon (especially by scientists), and helps in the formation or refinement of hypotheses, science may have a use for it. The same goes for “certainty,” which does have a generally accepted definition in science (it is very similar to “probability”), but which does not seem to be the one that you are using. An alternative suggestion would be to try and communicate your ideas without using any metaphors. Science does not speak in metaphor, except sometimes when it is educating others.

(I will also point out that you are using some very long sentences. For example, almost half of your first reply is a single sentence, from “one abstracts a common idea” to “its subject matter, for example the past” - and you also don't seem to be using paragraphs. I just want to suggest that this might be easier if you edited a bit more before submitting. :-) )

In any case: as I asked Ancheta above, what specific changes do you propose to make? Also, what do you think of the edits I have suggested (summarized at the end of my last reply)? Arc de Ciel (talk) 04:16, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Update: I noticed that my suggestion about the Alhazen anecdote is not included in my summary above, but it should also be there. Arc de Ciel (talk) 04:37, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

There has been a debate about truth in science between the realists and the antirealists. From the Glossary of Curd's and Cover's Philosophy of Science:

Scientific realism Scientific realism has several dimensions: metaphysical, epistemological, and methodological. While there is no single, monolithic version of scientific realism that all scientific realists accept, scientific realism is generally taken to be the doctrine that the world studied by science exists and has the properties it does independently of our beliefs, perceptions, and theorizing; that the aim of science is to describe and explain that world, including those many aspects of it that are not directly observable; that, other things being equal, scientific theories are to be interpreted literally; that to accept a theory is to believe that what it says about the world is true, and that by continually replacing current scientific theories with better ones, science makes objective progress and its theories get closer to the truth.

Antirealism a diverse group of doctrines whose common element is their rejection of realism. In the philosophy of science, antirealism includes instrumentalism, conventionalism, logical positivism, logical empiricism, and Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. Some antirealists (such as instrumentalists) deny that scientific theories that postulate unobservables should be interpreted realistically. Others (such as van Fraassen) concede that such theories should be interpreted realistically, but they deny that we should ever accept as true any theoretical claims about unobservables. (See constructive empiricism, conventionalism, instrumentalism.)

Another issue: the Duhem-Quine thesis says that a test of a theory may fail, not because the theory is false, but because one of the auxiliary hypotheses used in the test is false, e.g., there are seven planets in our solar system (testers of Newton's Law of Gravitation in the 1840's were unaware of the existence of Neptune). Ivar Y (talk) 08:42, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Further edits

I know it’s only been a few days, but I’ve decided to implement some changes to try and address your replies. I really want to get on to fixing the problems in the rest of the article – for example, the introductory section, and indeed the whole article, doesn’t once mention the null hypothesis (!). I also see that the section “Pragmatic model” is very long in this article, yet the same heading has no content on the stated “main article” on the topic, and so forth.

Of course, if you find time to make suggestions, I will still be happy to discuss and/or explain. (Also, I don’t intend to come across as acerbic or anything like that, if I have – I’m just trying to improve the article to make it reflect how science actually works. This article is strongly related to the future of science education, after all!)

Anyways, I changed the heading “Scientific certainty” to “Properties of scientific inquiry” – which is the best title I’ve thought of so far, even though I still think it could be better. I then added a new sentence (second sentence of “Scientific inquiry”): “This allows scientists to gain an understanding of reality, and later use that understanding to intervene in its causal mechanisms (such as to cure disease).” I didn’t reinstate the Alhazen anecdote though, since I'm thinking it might instead fit best on the “Philosophy of science” page.

A couple of notes to Ivar Y:

-I identify mostly with the first of the groups you pointed out, mainly because I make the assumptions of science (reality exists, etc). Of course, they are both philosophical positions rather than being descriptive of science itself, which I think could be considered as part of what I was trying to explain above.

-Thanks for the edit to my statement about certainty – I didn’t notice that I had used the rhetorical phrasing “can always.” :-)

-With regards to “crucial experiment” – it’s a reasonably important concept in science, but I agree about its relevance (unless perhaps it could be incorporated somewhere in the “Elements of scientific method” section). I added a bit to clarify the relation to Bayesian analysis, although I think that this could probably be better placed elsewhere in the article as well.

Arc de Ciel (talk) 07:37, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Arc de Ciel and Ivar Y, thank you for your development of this article. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 11:19, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Rather than pruning the pragmatic model section overly much, another approach might be to add more sections and content; for example I was planning to add more material on Francisco Sanches' skepticism That nothing is known. A physician, he had a biological viewpoint but was able to criticize physics (magnetism), which was still under the grip of Aristotle. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:28, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting "pruning" as such, only observing that the "main article" (Models of scientific inquiry) has no content under the same heading - so perhaps half or two-thirds of it could be moved from here to the main article. The section does seem quite long, especially for a model that is not the most recent one in use today. My other thought was that the key components of "abduction, deduction, induction" are quite deep within the section and could benefit from being more prominent. Arc de Ciel (talk) 17:49, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I’ve now updated the Introduction, so please let me know what you think. :-) I’m not sure that it’s in the best format (for example, I have a mild preference for avoiding numbered lists, but I wouldn’t object to someone numbering them again; etc), and I’m quite sure improvements can still be made, but I’m quite sure that it’s better than the previous version. It’s at least much closer to the process that is practiced today.

Again, there’s been very little information actually deleted – in fact, the only thing I completely removed is the statement about Born (in the source, he is not talking about the scientific method itself, but the fact that you require induction in order to postulate a scientific law. “No observation or experiment...can give more than a finite number of repetitions.”) The Fleck statement is incorporated into my new “Other components” section, where I thought the point it made was stronger, although I didn’t maintain the wording (the original sentence used the word “experience(s)” three times). I also moved the original description of the hypothetico-deductive model to the main page and integrated it there, as well as some of the content below it (such as the paragraph containing the Bayesian analysis-probability section that I wrote yesterday). Almost all of the information from this (the main exception being the sentences about probability), is incorporated into the new text.

I didn’t change the DNA example, since it still reasonably correlates with what I’ve written. (It does need it though – for example, the relevant experiment was not “seeing photo 51” but the crystallization of DNA and subsequent X-ray diffraction; similarly, there isn’t any mention of the generation of the structural model; etc). I also see a few small overlaps with things that are said later, so there will need to be some adaptations to account for that as well.

It would be great if anyone could please modify instead of reverting (especially if it’s only a sentence or two!) or suggest changes for discussion. :-) Of course, I can specify what I felt was important for any particular statement, although as before I’m not especially attached to any particular wording or organization as long as it maintains the main points. Arc de Ciel (talk) 08:51, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

There could be a concrete example for avoiding confirmation bias: Ian Shelton was initially skeptical that supernova 1987a was real, but possibly an artifact of instrumentation (null hypothesis) so he went outside and disproved his null hypothesis by observing sn 1987a with the naked eye. This example was provided by Leon Lederman. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 02:53, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Good point, and I think SN 1987A is a great example for the null hypothesis (observing something so spectacular is extremely rare, far less common than instrumentation artefacts, so you would want to make a separate observation before being confident in your results). Were you suggesting adding it into the introduction or further down the page? Either sounds reasonable to me.

I'm not sure it's the best example for confirmation bias though, since Shelton didn't actually fall for it. Perhaps one of the examples discussed here might be better - the first two, N-rays and Jacques Benveniste, are the most well-known. I would lean towards N-rays since in that case many labs reported replication of the nonexistent results. (The second is also somewhat emotionally charged today since it has to do with homeopathy.) Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:06, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Update: I see that you added it into the footnote. That works also. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:42, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Null Hypothesis

Your (Arc de Ciel's) "Edit summary" comment that "all hypotheses have a corresponding null hypothesis" is arguable. A more common view is that null hypotheses apply only to statistical testing. Some definitions showing this:

From the NIH site that you referenced:

Null hypothesis: in hypothesis testing, the hypothesis that an intervention has no effect, i.e., that there is no true difference in outcomes between a treatment group and a control group. Typically, if statistical tests indicate that the P value is at or above the specified a-level (e.g., 0.01 or 0.05), then any observed treatment effect is not statistically significant, and the null hypothesis cannot be rejected. If the P value is less than the specified a-level, then the treatment effect is statistically significant, and the null hypothesis is rejected. If a confidence interval (e.g., of 95% or 99%) includes zero treatment effect, then the null hypothesis cannot be rejected.

From the Wolfram site that you referenced:

A null hypothesis is a statistical hypothesis that is tested for possible rejection under the assumption that it is true (usually that observations are the result of chance). The concept was introduced by R. A. Fisher.

From the on-line Oxford English Dictionary:

null hypothesis n. Statistics a hypothesis that is the subject of a significance test, esp. the hypothesis that there is no actual difference between specified populations (any apparent difference being due to sampling or experimental error).

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary site:

Definition of NULL HYPOTHESIS: a statistical hypothesis to be tested and accepted or rejected in favor of an alternative; specifically : the hypothesis that an observed difference (as between the means of two samples) is due to chance alone and not due to a systematic cause

If all hypotheses have null hypotheses, what is the null hypothesis corresponding to Newton's Law of Gravitation? to Maxwell's equations? Ivar Y (talk) 17:57, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Arc de Ciel, Your viewpoint is understandable and clear. However, there is another sense in which statistical hypothesis testing is arguable: from the viewpoint of mathematics. The article is clear that in scientific method, it is essential that the researcher understand what is known, and what is not known at the present time. This is true in both science and mathematics. In statistical work, there is an inherent subjective uncertainty (also denoted error), which is not part of the ontology of mathematics. One famous example of the divide between statistics and mathematics was the philosophical difference between Jerzy Neyman and Alfred Tarski, representatives of statistical hypothesis testing and categorical logic modelling, respectively. They despised each other's viewpoints, but came together on the matter of Julia Robinson upon her nomination to the National Academy of Sciences.

All I am saying is that the article ought to delineate the points of view being espoused in the respective sections. Surely there is room for both a statistical point of view and a mathematical point of view in the article. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 18:56, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Please call me Arc. :-)

The definition I used, “a general or default position,” was the one at the top of the the Null hypothesis page, and it is also the sense in which I use it myself (this is also the page where I got the citations from). The null hypothesis for an equation like the Law of Gravitation would be simply that the equation in question is incorrect. One way to look at this is that the likelihood of any arbitrary equation to describe reality (before any evidence is gathered) is extremely low, and as a result this is the most probable outcome a priori. (Although, to be precise: there can be even more proposals for what the null hypothesis is. For example, if there is a previous explanation of the same results with sufficient evidence behind it, as was the case when relativity superseded Newtonian mechanics, you could say that the previous explanation is the null hypothesis instead.)

That is, in non-population experiments, there is still a default position, which we do tend to call the null hypothesis. However, the definitions you gave are still correct in the sense that all experiments are statistical in nature - they all have a confidence value attached to them, otherwise you could achieve complete certainty in science. (I think this is what Ancheta is referring to – please correct me if I’m wrong.) The problem is that I would call it somewhat misleading to say it is only relevant to “statistical hypotheses,” a term that tends to be interpreted much more narrowly.

As an example, a single experiment using a similar triangle calculation is more than sufficient to test the hypothesis that the height of a particular tall tree is over 20 meters (null hypothesis: that it is not). Unless the tree is very close to 20, the experiment will give you far more than 95% confidence without any statistical calculations. In research, I would give the example of certain SDS-PAGE tests in which the result is binary (yes-no), subject only to possible mistakes in the experimental protocol or the interpretation of the evidence. In general, you would still do replications and use multiple sources of evidence (equivalent to attempting to falsify certain auxiliary hypotheses that would cause problems if incorrect), but this does not necessarily involve direct application of statistics.

All that being said ‒ I see based on your sources, and a few others, that most authors use the narrower definition. I suppose the article should probably reflect that, so feel free to change it back. (I would prefer to avoid the terms “so-called” and “assumes” though – I can explain that further if you would like. Also, if you remove my citations again, please replace them with ones you think are better!) Arc de Ciel (talk) 00:58, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Method or methodology

In many places throughout the article 'method' is used synonymously with 'methodology'. Although this is also the case in common usage, I think we can afford to be more precise in an article about method. I suggest we use the word 'methodology' only when we are speaking about the study of method. I'll wait for comments before doing a search-and-replace. --ChrisSteinbach (talk) 22:10, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I've now replaced 'methodology' with 'method' in those places where the meaning is unambiguous. --ChrisSteinbach (talk) 00:48, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Descartes "framework"?

This taken from the history section:

Then, in 1637, René Descartes established the framework for scientific method's guiding principles in his treatise, Discourse on Method.

What framework did Descartes establish? To my mind the only thing that can be salvaged from his method, from the perspective of modern scientific method, is a mistrust of the senses. There are quotes on the history of scientific method page that show his thinking was clearly at odds with the conception of scientific method outlined here. --ChrisSteinbach (talk) 01:41, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but some searching shows that that one source for it could be this. Perhaps instead of using the vague word "framework" we could describe exactly which contributions he was supposed to have made (after cross-checking it with other sources, of course). Arc de Ciel (talk) 02:57, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Boldface "the"

Someone recently changed the boldface to include "the" in "the scientific method." I thought that boldface was reserved for the article title and its synonyms (e.g. you would bold it in "The Beatles" because it's in the article title), but I could be mistaken and I can't find anything specifically about this in the MOS - the pages I found were MOS:BOLDTITLE and MOS:BOLD. Does anyone know of a precedent? Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:03, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Updating Francis Bacon reference

Changing the following quote,

Bacon, Francis Novum Organum (The New Organon), 1620. Bacon's work described many of the accepted principles, underscoring the importance of theory, empirical results, data gathering, experiment, and independent corroboration.

to read,

Bacon, Francis Novum Organum (The New Organon), 1620. Bacon's work described many of the accepted principles, underscoring the importance of empirical results, data gathering and experiment.

Theory, or rather theorising, plays no role in Bacon's method; hypotheses are supposed to emerge from the process he outlines. Quite likely this is the root of Newton's Hypotheses non fingo. I removed "independent corroboration" from the list of principles handed down from Bacon. Certainly he wanted scientists to join him in using his method, but he was mainly concerned with adding to the body of scientific knowledge and not corroborating what was already established. --ChrisSteinbach (talk) 01:41, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Chris, with your permission, I propose to augment the text in the reference as follows (from 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, "Bacon, Francis"): [In Novum Organum, we] "proceed to apply what is perhaps the most valuable part of the Baconian method, the process of exclusion or rejection. This elimination of the non-essential, ..., is the most important of Bacon's contributions to the logic of induction, and that in which, as he repeatedly says, his method differs from all previous philosophies."

--Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 02:54, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me: go ahead! --ChrisSteinbach (talk) 07:13, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Propose replacing the GR example of a 'specific hypothesis'

Since, in scientific method, the hypothesis stage is best used for knowledge whose truth is unknown, I propose to replace the GR example with a hypothesis which is not yet corroborated. My citation for this proposal is to a review article, concerning a family of well-known hypotheses. One of them was proposed by Francis Crick and Christof Koch, among others, about the role of the claustrum in the function of the mammalian brain. (Crick came to this study after his prior success in the DNA story.)

There are other possibilities, for example a conjecture about the role of the arcuate fasciculus (AF) in the interaction between Broca's area and Wernicke's area for the human brain. My citations for this possible example are a textbook from the 1980s which cites Norman Geschwind's articles, and the newer reactions to this conjecture. (I see that Lateralization of brain function has a dubious tag on its AF statement which can be cleaned up in the process.)

I am hoping to capture the sense of danger (i.e., risk) in mooting a hypothesis, which a well-known example like GR does not engender in the article.

Do any editors object? --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 19:59, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Since this is a broad overview article, I would say that an example being well-known is a point in its favor, and I don't think that's exclusive with the idea of risk. :-) But practically every subject still has open hypotheses - I would first want to consider how illustrative an example is, how easy it is to explain, how easy it is to explain the significance of the question, number of available references, etc.

For example, why not abiogenesis instead? The question is very easy to describe, a summary of the current hypotheses and research approaches should be quite easy, there is a lot of literature about it, it is still an open question, etc. This is the first thing that comes to mind, but of course I'm sure there are others. Also, I think that a well-chosen closed question that used to be open could also achieve your goal, provided that the time frame during which the question was open is adequately described, and there would likely be many more sources available. (I don't think the current GR version is good in that regard - although we don't have to have only a single example, so perhaps both sections could be included.) Arc de Ciel (talk) 07:03, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Arc, I like your suggestion. Upon reading abiogenesis I had some immediate questions for further possible further inquiry. This could be inspirational or even aspirational for lay readers.

1. Might water be a prerequisite for life to arise? This would save billions or even trillions in the future research budgets.

2. If water ( or other similar earth-based constraint ) were not necessary for life to arise, we would then arrive at Fermi's question "where is everyone else?"

3. Are we alone?

4. If we are alone then why are we hell-bent on destroying ourselves?

Again, it's a fertile question. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 10:26, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I would actually say that 2/3/4 are aspects of the same question - the Fermi paradox, which you referenced - for example, the self-destruction of intelligent species is one of the proposed answers. :-) For the first question, there is some discussion at Alternative biochemistry#Non-water solvents which could be used. Analogous questions discussed on that page include the possibilities of non-carbon-based life (e.g. silicon-based) or other forms of DNA (e.g. the arsenic-containing DNA that was in the news last year but which hasn't been corroborated). I think expanding a discussion on abiogenesis to include those could be very informative for readers. I probably wouldn't be able to get involved in much writing (I'm currently trying to extricate myself from another topic area right now as well!) but I'm happy to discuss. Arc de Ciel (talk) 12:01, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Arc, upon reading Christian De Duve's Vital Dust, I realized that the central dogma of molecular biology actually clarified some of the questions about the primordial soup, and that the central dogma is a good example. The holes in the central dogma have always bothered me, so the holes serve additionally as an reminder that the central dogma is still an open question. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 08:54, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi! I haven't read the book you refer to, but the central dogma (DNA -> RNA -> protein) was almost certainly not present in the earliest life (for example, see RNA world hypothesis). Also, the original hypothesis actually isn't an open question in biology any more (all known life depends on the process), except insofar as there is some doubt about how prevalent the important noncanonical processes are.

Anyways, I included both versions, since I think it's important to have a quantitative example in this initial section (I had misinterpreted you as referring to a later part of the article). Also, since it was Crick who first came up with the idea, I changed the attribution and described Nirenberg's role in the citation, then shortened the quote to the more concise phrasing. Arc de Ciel (talk) 21:22, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Arc, it's important to separate hypothesis from prediction. In the GR example, Einstein's calculation of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury was not a prediction, since the precession had been known since 1859. Rather his calculation was a confidence builder for him, a corroboration that his theory of GR was right (Newton's corroborating calculation in classical mechanics was the acceleration of the apple -- known since the time of Galileo -- and the corresponding acceleration of the moon under the influence of gravitation "and I found them to answer, pretty nearly"). If we are talking GR, Einstein's hypothesis was his equivalence principle: the equivalence of inertial mass and gravitational mass. I propose replacing the perihelion statement in the overview with the equivalence principle, instead. For the prediction stage of scientific method, a corresponding prediction for GR would have been the prediction of the measurements at Príncipe,which was a Royal Astronomical Society expedition planned in 1917 in anticipation of the May 29, 1919 eclipse (this is already in the article). --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 01:37, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

As a tangential comment, hypothesis and prediction are generally not that distinct, since the two of them (at least ideally) are logically equivalent (also, you're right that I should have been more careful about my use of the word "prediction" - there is a colloquial use which can refer to anything derived from a hypothesis). I agree that it is better to use the equivalence principle, so I've added it. Arc de Ciel (talk) 04:35, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

If the objective is to make this article accessible to as many people as possible, then a historical scientific discovery limits readership to those familiar with that discovery and the scientific context. What about an every day example that illustrates the process rather than a historically significant discovery?

For example, on entering a room and switching on the light, we observe there is no light. The hypotheses might be: the bulb is broken, the fuse has tripped, there is a powercut. Experiments might be: try other lights to see if there is power, replace the bulb, check the fuse, etc.

Fixing a broken light has many elements of scientific method and is sufficiently concrete for most readers to understand. pgr94 (talk) 10:04, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Positivism and the scientific method

In order to define the area of use of the scientific method as described within this article in science, I tried adding some not necessarily perfect text about its relation to positivism, social sciences, qualitative research and the positivism dispute. I'm used to such edits being flatly reverted by mathematicians and physicists with no regard for other academic disciplines than their own, so I'll add this little notice in case someone is interested in taking a look at what I added in the article history. Narssarssuaq (talk) 12:18, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

You are again adding more original research. Look at WP:UNDUE and WP:OR, WP:SYN. "Antipositivism (also known as interpretivism or interpretive sociology) is the view in social science that the social realm may not be subject to the same methods of investigation as the natural world", i.e not science. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

You need to reference your claim that social sciences (soft science) not based on positivism are counted outside the realm of science. If true, it is of vital importance to include this information in the article, as the very terms social sciences and soft science indicate otherwise. Narssarssuaq (talk) 13:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

The editor adding unsourced claims is the one who has to provide the sources. Also, I don't think the content of your edits is suitable for the lead even if it were sourced. Arc de Ciel (talk) 21:24, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Narssarssuaq, you're failing to WP:AGF, but that's not why editors are flatly reverting contributions like this, the WP:LEAD should summarize what's in the body of the article... You've tried to frame the discussion of (21st century) scientific method against the unexamined hubris of 19th century positivist sociology... and following a brief declamation of the article's non-applicability to antipositivist "branches of science", i.e. the social sciences, because of a methodological dispute in 20th century Germany, you imply it somehow exposes a lack of concern for the ubiquitous methodology of hard science: not only in philosophy, ethics and theology, but all the traditionally non-scientific academic studies. See WP:NPOV/WP:OR and shoot for not necessarily a problem.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 04:07, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion to restore pseudoscience and antiscience as part of definition in Alternative medicine article, using sources Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, etc.

A discussion involving retoring content from sources describing alternative medicine as being based on pseudoscience, antiscience, tradition, and bad science, including the first 14 sources of this version, such as Journal of the Association of Medical Colleges, Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, Academic Medicine, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Medical Journal of Australia, Nature Medicine, etc., to the Alternative medicine article is now going on here. ParkSehJik (talk) 02:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

No mention of Burden of proof/burden of evidence

The disambiguation page Burden of proof has an entry for Scientific burden of evidence which redirects to Scientific method but the word burden does not appear in this article, nor the main Science article. I DID find the word burden in Talk:Scientific method/Archive 1 but only as part of a discussion of some other aspect of the article. I've read and heard many times in relation to science and the scientific method that "the burden of evidence is on the positive" (meaning that one needs to show evidence that something exists, rather than just claiming something and asking others to show evidence that it does NOT exist) - shouldn't this phrase be used in the article?

Also I've seen a similar problem in at least one other article, some word or phrase forwards to another related article in which there's absolutely no mention of the original word or phrase. I'd think the forwarded-to article should actually say something about the word/phrase. Is there any meta-policy related to this? Benbradley (talk) 04:25, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The article is clear that certainty is not definite in science or in scientific method. Why is it necessary to assign burden in that case? Who wants to know? Why do they want to know? How much do they want to invest or expend in order that they might know? What is the benefit of knowing? Exactly who would be benefitting if the result were known? --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 09:50, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Ben, if you've read and heard many times in relation to science and the scientific method that "the burden of evidence is on the positive", then you should be able to find sources for discussion. Please take care to find reliable sources which fully meet the verifiability policy. Thanks, dave souza, talk 11:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of "so called scientific method" at WP:MEDRS talk

Following discussion re MEDRS, ontologic status of psychiatric categories, and controversy re the scientific methodologies for attaching the term "disease", "disorder", and :lifetime" to the categories (if they really exist, e.g., Penis envy), in the psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, Bipolar disorder, and related article talk pages, FiachraByrne correctly wrote (bolfaced added by me for emphasis of most relevant part, and whose comment I may have distorted by excerpting just a part of it in order to raise the following issue) -

"Psychiatry is one of the oldest medical specialisms. It's designation as medical practice is a disciplinary/professional attribute that has little to do with the actual content of psychiatric knowledge or the nature of psychiatric practice. To establish this it is unnecessary to evaluate whether in any or all instances psychiatry adheres to the so-called 'scientific method'."

However, the designation of psychatry always being medicine, and not just some parts of it, with the associated implications of established efficacy in healing real diseases, at Wikipedia, is a WP:MEDRS issue, not just a matter of determining the common usage on the street. The part of FiachraByrne's comment quoted above raises issues being glossed over by other editors at those multiple talk pages, where it is declared to be "common knowledge" that psychiatry is for the most part evidence and science based, that its designated categories (eg., penis envy and bipolar disorder) are real, that the DSM designation of their being "disorders" estabishes with MEDRS that they are, and that they are lifetime, and questioning this violated WP:COMMONSENSE, and is WP:BATTLE because it is unquestionable, even with MEDRS and RS saying otherwise, all because Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the self-proclaimed "bible" for practitioners, is always unque3stionably MEDRS. Furthermore, RS and MEDRS content is being totally deleted from any WP:MOS (lede) "controversy" paragraph as being UNDUE, by simply citing the declarations in DSM, even when contradicted by other MEDRS sources.

The same WP:MEDRS standards should be applied to psychiatry as to alternative medicine articles. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is also one of the oldest "medical" practices. There is rigorous enforcement by WP:MEDRS hawks (of which I am one) that assertions re TCM being healing "medicine", as defined in that article and by MEDRS standards. The only allowable edits are that TCM practitioners "claim" to heal. TCM uses supernatural etiological objects ("qi" flow blockage causing qi, not the heart, to propel the blood inadequately), and outright false statements about anatomies, developed without the "cutting" of the "tom" in "anatomy" (Greek "tom" means "cut", as in "a-tom" – meaning not further able to be cut, as atoms were thought to be), has also historically been designated "medicine". MEDRS has different standards than accepted common usage, and for good reasons well argued in setting up the policy.

Should the psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, Bipolar disorder, and related articles be held to a lower WP:MEDRS standard than alternative medicine and its related articles, as to its designation as a healing "medicine", with implications to claims of efficacy and intent of all areas of its practice (e.g., forensic psychiatry, or psychiatry practiced under the color of being "medicine" at Guantanamo), when there are substantial MEDRS sourced content that at, least part of psychiatry, is not based on science at all, and other parts are not intended to heal anything?

Should Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V be continued to be unquestioned as MEDRS, and citec as "common knowledge" which, if questioned with MEDRS or RS, is claimed to be WP:BATTLE and violate WP:COMMON SENSE, as was DSM IV, especially in light of comments such as that of Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-IV Task Force - "DSM 5 will accept diagnoses that achieve reliabilities as unbelievably low as 0.2-0.4 (barely beating the level of chance agreement two monkeys could achieve throwing darts at a diagnostic board"[1].

In light of the above discussion and related discussions at associated talk pages, discussion re uniform application of MEDRS standards to all WP articles is here[2].

ParkSehJik (talk) 19:51, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

History cont.

Ancheta Wis, deep thanks for yr research; I'm puzzled. You suggest Popkin is mistaken in thinking Sanches' Spanish phrase means 'scientific method' because the term was first used in the C19th. This is circular because if he wasn't mistaken then the first use wasn't in the C19th. Can you say how he is mistaken and the basis for saying the first use was in the C19th? On the big picture, I still think "innate skepticism" misrepresents both skepticism as an argued philosophy and the fact that 1580ish was a very particular moment in intellectual history because of skepticism's revival, which matters if skepticism was formative of modern science. Pertin1x (talk) 21:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Pertin1x, let's transfer the discussion to Talk:History of scientific method. What we are learning fits there better. Briefly, Popkin cites the title of a lost book. The commentary on this lost book, such as

Guy Patin (1701) Naudaeana et Patiniana, pp. 72-3 cites Sanchez Metodo universal de las ciencias, a lost, projected, or unpublished title, according to Limbrick. This is the best evidence so far for Popkin's statement.
Émilien Jean Marie Senchet (1904) Essai sur la méthode de Francisco Sanchez Paris: V. Giard & E. Briere

I do not disagree that Sanchez Metodo universal de las ciencias means that he originated this term and that he even called it a 'universal method'. But the text of the Sanches book is currently lost to us.

Popkin breaks new ground for the English-speaking world, and I propose that we introduce the topic on the history page with your Popkin citation. I have been basing everything on the Limbrick/Thomson edition of Sanches, and the Google books link, above, agrees with what is in the Sanches article already, not with Limbrick. She states that Sanches was in Rome 1571-1573, but the Google books link says 1569. She states that there was a botanical garden at La Sapienza, but it was not started til the 1700s, too late for Sanches. Patin introduces errors about Sanches as well; he got his death date mixed up, an error corrected by Limbrick's research.

From our perspective, I think we both agree skepticism is 'in' scientific method. The current best evidence is Descartes' Discourse on Method, but Descartes does not cite Sanches, although Limbrick suggests that Descartes saw Quod Nihil Scitur in Germany. I think we both agree that Sanches' modus sciendi is his method, as suggested by the titles above. It's just not for sure, from my point of view, because it's a lost work. What Sanches does say in Quod Nihil Scitur is 'get down to the details, the specifics, the thing itself' before you can say you know something. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 10:01, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Pertin1x, I have just posted a proposal on Talk:History of scientific method. All editors, please feel free to correct any misstatements I may have inserted on that talk page. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 02:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC) ≠≠≥

Ok, meet you there.Pertin1x (talk) 12:08, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

edits re skepticism as per approved alteration to History of Scientific Method Pertin1x (talk) 08:26, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Nature speaks for itself??

In the introduction is the following: "The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false." Oh, my. I have never heard reality "speak". This metaphor is inappropriate here. It really is very very inappropriate, imho. Other problems: "predictions prove false" Oh my, oh my! Who wrote this tripe? How does one prove a prediction "false" ? One can demonstrate a prediction fails to accurately describe an outcome, but that certainly does not prove anything. This paragraph has butchered the very essence of science by injecting this risible content. Science does NOT prove. Truth and Falsity are meaningful in religious, mathematical and philosophical discussions, NOT in an article about science. Accuracy, utility, comprehensiveness, precision, and simplicity DO have a place here, maybe even elegance or beauty. "Truth" does not, "proof" does not (except in distinguishing science from the non empirical). Someone really needs to correct this nonsense. While you're at it remove the nearly vacuous "supporting" and "challenging" terminology. Is it the scientists that support/challenge or the 'speach' of reality?173.189.77.181 (talk) 18:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes there are currently a lot of problems with this page right now. I encourage you to remain involved in the discussion on how to fix this page.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:19, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Quarkgluonsoup, please provide a justification for your list of diffs from Arc's contributions. The current diff of your changes from Arc's edit is not too long, and it is a rhetorical stretch to call them 'many'. I hope that your differences are rhetorical only. Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 09:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

173.189.77.181, it is customary to assume good faith when characterizing the edits of the article. Hundreds of editors have contributed to the article, which has existed since the beginning of the encyclopedia. As an example of a 'prediction proven false', David Scott falsified one of Aristotle's statements during his voyage to the Moon, by dropping a hammer and a feather, with the result that both dropped simultaneously, with the same rate of acceleration. Thus a single counterexample to Aristotle serves as disproof: Galileo demolished Aristotle's statement by experiment, and also with logic. His advancement to scientific method was to elevate experiment, the results of which we enjoy to this day. __Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 09:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately for the statements in this article, the process is almost never so black and white. The article has far more problems than the ones I addressed.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 17:13, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

We need to start with specifics; list them, please. __Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 17:25, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

You saw some of my specifics in what I changed. List your specifics for why you think they are unnecessary changes.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 19:56, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

"To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.
- 'must' changed to 'should'.
Yes, an inquiry does not have to be based on empirical or measurable evidence to be considered scientific 100% of the time. String Theory is a good example of this. Changing "must" to "should" reflects how science is done, not how the historically illiterate authors of this article want to think science is done.
I have seen only a few consequences of String theory which in fact affect physics, except at the margins, so this claim does not convince me. Hunches are welcome in physics, of course, but it takes a brave person to stick his neck out for a theory is mostly mathematics right now with no hint of observable phenomena as yet. There isn't even a stable domain of definition. It appears it will take awhile for Theory 3.0 (or higher) to make actual progress.
The fact that any scientific inquiry isn't based on empirical or measurable evidence shows that "should" is the appropriate word. If it "must" be based on empirical data, then String Theory cannot be considered scientific. Since String Theory is considered scientific, "must" is the wrong word.
Disagree. This tells me that you demarcate science as that which paid scientists do. It reminds me of the voyage of Magellan, who hired the best minds he could find, including astrologers, who had the best intellects of the time. I can think of some well-known places with no string theorists at all. 'Scientific' doesn't hold for these institutions? Funding defines science?
Yes people who do science are called scientists. People who are not called scientists do not do science. Is this a point of disagreement?
String theory is currently a branch of mathematics. Feynman has commented on this: "Mathematics is not real, but it feels real. Where is this place?" ... At that point, there was silence in the lecture hall.

"Theorist" is the better name for members of the community of String theory. They use mathematicians as their theoreticians, and the mathematicians use String theorists in a reciprocal relationship.
No, Superstring Theory is a branch of physics (String Theory merged with with the physics of supersymmetry). But this is a good point. The physical science are unlike the chemical and biological sciences in various ways. Many concepts in physics are based more in math than in experiment (think of Quantum Chromodynamics or the Higgs Boson). Again the dispute here is simply whether or not scientific ideas are always based in experiment, and as you have admitted here, they aren't always.
Quarkgluonsoup, thank you for your specific reply. If the community accepts that the Standard Model (with 25 parameters) is superior to supersymmetry (with 120 parameters) then Occam's razor says Supersymmetric string theory is ruled out by the LHC results of November 2012, "As Supersymmetry Fails Tests, Physicists Seek New Ideas". This has just convinced me that it's science, because some of its predictions have been falsified. Now some parts of String theory are just wrong; that is progress over a String theory which is not falsifiable. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 23:39, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I will comment on string theory at the end. Also see my next comment with regards to science as a profession. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
"The chief characteristic which distinguishes the scientific method from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false."
- deleted.
"Let reality speak for itself" is a dubious claim, which has been contested by several others here. Also, supporting an idea when its predictions turn out right and doubting the idea when they don't isn't "the chief characteristic which distinguishes" science from non-science. It is how humans understand the world and adapt to it every day.
That is confirmation bias. As Feynman and Alhazen both said, 'You have to be your own worst enemy' to arrive at the truth.
You didn't address my statement.
Disagree. Using agreement where disproof is required is affirming the consequent, a fallacy.
This began as a discussion about whether "reality speak for itself" is a legitimate statement and now you are talking about logical fallacies?
To me, it's rhetorical. When I read "reality" in the article, I mentally rewrite it to Truth. See the above statement about mathematics not being real. Mathematics is distinguished from science for a reason. Historically, geometry was a theory of physics, but that was disproved in the nineteenth century. Some mathematicians like Gauss suppressed their results until other mathematicians discovered counterexamples that geometry was a physical theory.
Right, and even a basic description of science is that it doesn't (and can't) uncover "truth" but facts that, at best, can point in the direction of "truth".
Yes, and when the article claims that the scientific method can uncover "reality", it is claiming it can uncover truth. Or is reality not truth?Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 01:22, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
To put a finer point on it, scientific method can reveal untruths, and thus lead us closer to better answers than our previous biases allowed us, by a process of elimination.

Hopefully, a scientific method can allow scientists to realize what myths they subscribe to (this is meant in a positive way -- a constructive reminder). For example, if a line of reasoning winds up in 'unprovable', then it is time to back up and try again in another line of reasoning. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
For more on 'reality' see also Penrose 2004 The Road to Reality below, p.1042 "...what is really going on...". (What came to mind when I read that Penrose sentence was James Clerk Maxwell's boyhood question: "what is the go of things", meaning of course, 'how does it work') --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 02:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Original research is prohibited here.

Why does everything have to be proven to be taken as true? One cannot prove that a sunset is beautiful for it to be true. You have a strong logical positivist bias that you are completely unaware of.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 17:37, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
To be strict, the evaluation of "beauty" occurs in the mind; it is not an intrinsic characteristic of the sunset. The statement "The sunset is beautiful" is a shortening of "The sunset is beautiful to (most) humans," which is a correct (and "provable") statement, but the sunset itself is neutral with respect to this. It is only the sun, atmosphere, clouds, etc that actually exist in Nature. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
What you are saying, then, is that beauty has no intrinsic existence, that it is nothing more than the product of chemical reactions in the mind. Your belief that nothing beyond the measurable aspects of nature, such as the sun or clouds, exists is logical positivism and a philosophical bias. This again illustrates your blindness to your own biases. Biases aren't bad, everyone has them, but what is bad is being blind to them. Beauty certainly exists, but whether it is nothing more than a product of a chemical reaction in the mind or if it does have some intrinsic existence is not something science can answer. It is a metaphysical question. Any belief that it being a metaphysical question makes it ultimately a meaningless question is, again, logical positivism.
No, Arc is not saying that about beauty. 'Intrinsic' is being used in a technical way. It's a dispassionate descriptor, like intrinsic versus extrinsic laser action. You might try searching for the usage to see the word in action. You imputed a bias to Arc, and revealed one of your own. If you are seeking the origins of science right now (* 14:06, 10 February 2013 (UTC) *) it is a red-linked article, a virgin field for you, as an editor who believes in humanist inquiry for truth, beauty, and the good, perhaps spoken of by Pliny, Seneca, and other ancients. My belief is that you are attacking the wrong article.
Need I impute bias to anyone? Is there any question that everyone is biased? In this context "intrinsic" refers to whether beauty has any real existence or is just an illusion on our part. Nice attempt to dodge the topic. Have you even read anything I have said here?

Quarkgluonsoup, may I recommend the work of Antonio Damasio to you. It is possible to work on beauty and the higher concepts in the brain in a scientific way. Damasio & Arc may be colleagues, even. They definitely belong to the same community. The editor responsible for the content linked to 'reality' below is in that community, as well.
I am not claiming that you are misreading, but you are cueing differently. When Arc stated that beauty is not intrinsic to the sunset, he left unsaid (because he is cautious) the possibility that beauty is intrinsic to that beholder's brain. See Damasio's work.
Or either might be real outside of anyone's mind. Why is this relevant again?
Or perhaps it might make sense to leave the problem of universals, as outside the scope of this article or talk page? OK?

I don't really understand what the objection is. The statement in qestion is essentially another way of phrasing the statement that scientists try to be as objective as possible, with reference to one of the central ways that we go about it.

I'm quite fine with the statement that someone who tries several approaches to solve a problem, and tries until they get it right, is doing science at a basic level. You don't have to be a scientist to do science; you don't have to be a firefighter to fight fires (say, if the fire occurred in your home). The only difference is that the firefighter is trained and has much better equipment.

Instead of "reality," do you have a proposed substitute word? Science uncovers predictive models; "reality" is just a shorthand for whatever it is those models are predictive of, i.e. whatever it is that produces the experimental results whenever we run experiments. If it's an extremely advanced computer simulation (see simulation hypothesis) then that's what we're predicting. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Each mention of "reality" needs to be rewritten because there isn't a single word that could be used. For example, rewrite " This allows scientists to gain an understanding of reality," to "This allows scientists to gain an understanding of the topic under study"Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

How about 'system of the world', to quote Isaac Newton --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Show me an example from the article.

I don't have an objection to that particular change; in fact I think it's a better way of putting it (one step of inference instead of two). Do you have proposals for the other occurrences? (Speaking of which, were you going to revise it out of the philosophy and history sections as well?)

I think that simply using “world” as a replacement would be reasonable. The issue, though, is that it can be interpreted to refer to only the Earth and not elsewhere. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
It can be, provide an example.
Sorry, an example of what? Of the term "world" being used to refer to a planet? Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
An example of what we would change.
"These steps must be repeatable, to guard against mistake or confusion in any particular experimenter. "
- deleted.
Again, this is not how science actually works even if it should in theory. Changing "must" to "should" is another option.
That is replicability. Otherwise you get a bunch of claims seen once.
Again, the problem is that the statement says something "must" happen when it often does not. What is the problem with accepting that things don't happen 100% of the time in a particular way?
"Should" is OK but not convincing, it's not the best.
So something that is on a basic level wrong factually ("must") is better than something that is correct but imperfect ("should")? Is there another word we should use?
How about "ought".

That is fine. You can make the change unless you want me to.
I will object to this - see below. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Of course you will.
"Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible in order to reduce biased interpretations of results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, giving them the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established (when data is sampled or compared to chance)."
- deleted.
This section, besides being wrong (no one is objective), sounds like something written for a high school term paper.
I actually agree with your statement, which comes from the Austrian school of economics (The subjective theory of value. Max Born discovered this, as well). But then I didn't write that paragraph. No problem.
So we can agree to change it?
Conditionally with the acceptance of others.
So that is a no?
I believe User:Arc de Ciel wrote this, so he has a say. (Arc, I do not agree with the dismissive tone above.)

Why am I not surprised.
I did not write that paragraph. That said, I see no incorrect statements - the only thing I can't be sure of is that I haven't heard the term "full disclosure" used in this context before, but that's a minor point. The paragraph does not claim that people are objective as you say, only that science is intended to be objective.

"Essay-like" is a style concern, and is something that is fixed not by deleting but by rewriting using the same information. What is essay-like? What phrasing do you propose? Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Using your own personal terms, such as "reality" or "let reality speak for itself" which isn't found in mainstream science textbooks, but rather comes from how you think the scientific method should be described. Thus, it isn't just essay-like writing but original research. The phrasing we use should be that which is found in science text books. I studied science in college, and many of the terms, as well as the writing style, that this article uses was completely absent from any of the science that I studied. It is also absent from all of the science I have studied since then. It is a stylistic change that is needed, and many of my edits were changing style, not deleting things, and these were undone as well.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Arc is not the only editor who uses the term reality. It's a rhetorical term of art, which you are attacking as esoteric. It's like a mathematician's custom of using ordinary words in an esoteric way. Ludwik Fleck calls this usage thought style. According to Fleck, a community (a thought collective) uses these specialized words in common to communicate more rapidly with each other. That said, it is becoming clear to me that you are attacking the wrong article (see the link to reality above.) __Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 15:25, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
So now this article is about art? Using terms not used in mainstream sources in the field is original research, and is disallowed on Wikipedia.
'Term of art' means 'technical term'. Not art as in artist, but art as in something construed or constructed. The usage of art in this sense is as in state of the art.
I have never heard that term used as a "technical term" having any relevance to science. Why do you keep insisting on making up words and concepts and defining them however you want? This is original research and is exactly why the article is in the sorry state it is in.

I do agree with you that the greatest weight should be placed on science textbooks, or rather material written by scientists more generally (because textbooks are usually focused on specific fields rather than the entire enterprise; the scientific method itself is only minimally mentioned, if that, and how to practice science itself is not found in any textbook or even in classes). Scientists do indeed use the term, especially when speaking to non-scientists, in a manner similar to its philosophical origin. For example, Google found a comment in this interview by Steven Jay Gould, as well as a number of books such as this one. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Found a comment? In any case that is besides the point because "term of art" is just something ancheta said here.
'term of art' is a link that has existed in Wikipedia for over 8 years. You demonstrated unfamiliarity with it, and I explained it. Some fields that use it are law, engineering, science, technology, business, ... I could go on. Please be careful. David Deutsch is a well-known physicist & author. Roger Penrose is an even better known mathematical physicist and Hawking co-author.
David Deutsch (1997), The Fabric of Reality

Roger Penrose (2004), The Road to Reality
"Scientific method has been practiced in some form for at least one thousand years (ref name="Alhazen")
- changed to 'thousands of years'
You disagree with this change?
When Aristotle promulgated empiricism, he neglected the subsequent checks and balances described in the article, added by others. At least Alhazen figured out ways to falsify previous claims, to combat confirmation bias.
"Empiricism" (big E) is a school of thought that emerged in the 18th century. "Empericism" (little E) is a process of using experience to draw conclusions that existed long before Aristotle. You are descripting the scientific method as some kind of engineered machine with "checks and balances". The way it works in practice is far less orderly. The article should describe both this theory as well as the practice of the scientific method.
No argument that the real world is far less orderly. As Alhazen said, "the road to truth is rough".

But the need for checks and balances is a reality when multiple people are involved. When only one person is involved, then he must be his own worst enemy to be confident he is right.
I have never heard of "checks and balances" as being part of the scientific method. You may be referring to things like per review, but no source calls these "checks and balances". That is original research and isn't allowed on Wikipedia.
I do not think he is suggesting that the phrase "checks and balances" be included in the article. People used empirical testing long before Alhazen (I have no objection to including a statement to that effect), but I do not know of anyone who described a specific process for going about it, which is what the scientific method is. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Read Pliny the Elder and Seneca. To say nothing of numerous others in antiquity.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I see no one has responded to this comment of him. Well I suppose when you have such a shallow view of history you probably have no interest in nor awareness of great ancient minds like Pliny and Seneca.
This is an article on method. Probably their views belong in a related page, instead.
Like what?
If it is possible to mention Galen together with your esteemed authors, History of medicine. This is based on some quotations I have, assembled by medical researchers. I have to warn you that page is watched vigilantly. Careful. I recommend using that article's talk page first.

I didn't respond until I was ready with the rest of my responses as well. What empirically based processes did they propose, and in which of their works? Which historians refer to their works as part of the scientific method? I don't have a strong opinion on this point, and if you can answer those questions I would be fine with adding it. But there are definitely sources that say the scientific method did not start until Alhazen (others Bacon or Galileo), so that would have to be acknowledged as well. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Who said anything about historians? Pliny and Seneca used the same scientific tools and answered many of the same questions as modern biologists and ecologists. I was claimed above that the scientific method wasn't used any further back than 1,000 years ago and so Pliny and Seneca (among many others) demonstrate that this is not true.
Pliny & Seneca, perhaps demonstrate the science that clearly existed before explicit statements, explicit requirements for a method of knowing (modus sciendi). Thinkers such as these existed in all the inhabited continents. Their topic was science rather than a scientific method. It's pretty clear that scientific statements had to exist before the first statements of method. Historically, Alhazen (ibn al-Haytham, the Physicist) was reacting to Claudius Ptolemy's theories, and he had to disprove them. Maybe you might be able to produce some statements of Pliny or Seneca which show their methods of reasoning about their scientific investigations. That would be a start.
That is a very long and convoluted way to agree with me that the methods of science are older than 1000 years.
"Confirmed theories are also subject to subsumption by more accurate theories. For example, thousands of years of scientific observations of the planets were explained almost perfectly by Newton's laws. "
- changed 'For example' to 'In a commonly cited example' -- A rhetorical change.
Yes, citing the example that ushered in the scientific revolution as a typical example (For example...) is misleading and, again, a commonly cited example.
To be more precise, the scientific revolution began in the 1500s, and ended with Newton. As you well know, the mystic Johannes Kepler, using the best data of the time (from Tycho Brahe), discovered his 3 laws by trial and error, which became theorems for Newton. The observations over the previous millennia, as well as Brahe's data, came from observations made by the naked eye.
Whether something called the "scientific revolution" happened (rather than a set of events that later generations labeled a "revolution") and when it happened is a question of historiography and besides the point here. The methods science uses today have roots going back much further than the 1500s.
I was merely responding to your comment. It's rhetorical.
How?
It's rhetorical because it requires no answer.

I am responding to your claim, because I read below that you wanted responses to missed points. In the 1500s, Authority was the deciding factor. Aristotelianism (scholasticism) held sway in the universities, with authority dating back thousands of years, even with an unusable form of logic. There was a large demand for scientific knowledge, and also medical knowledge, in printed books, by the educated classes like physicians (630 editions, translations, and commentaries on Galen by 1560). The better minds (like Francisco Sanches, Francis Bacon, etc.) rebelled against the stultifying curriculum, by seeking a better path to knowledge. Hence Bacon's method. But before Bacon, Francisco Sanches wrote Quod Nihil Scitur (That Nothing Is Known, 1581), which was answered, finally, by Descartes, On Method. Scientific communities arose in the 1500s and Galileo wrote specifically for their approbation. However, it was dangerous. In the generation before, burning at the stake was a distinct threat to outspoken minds, and it's hard to do science in a repressive State. (Sanches particularly had to be careful.) Thus Galileo published Two New Sciences (1638) in Holland, out of the reach of the Church's authority.
This is a whiggish and ahistorical view of history. For one, the witch burning was confined to the early modern period, not the thousands of years before the 17th century. Also, "authority" wasn't the "deciding factor" at all. Many, such as William of Occam and his famous razor were part of a robust intellectual tradition that disputed such "authority". Also, Aristotelianism was only prominent for about 300 years, so it can hardly be said to dominate thought for the thousands of years before the 17th century. You paint a picture of a Europe that was wallowing in its own stupidity for thousands of years before some smart people decided to start talking in the 17th century. That is completely ahistorical.
Thank you for pointing out what Whig means. I never got it before.
"Whig" can refer to many topics ultimately originating from 17th century political events in England. I can answer any questions about it if you have any.

Joseph Needham has pointed out that Chinese science was the best in the world before it was eclipsed by the scientific revolution; since Needham records that the Ming dynasty was not very good for Chinese science (for example, they moved an observatory to a different latitude, which invalidated the astronomical instruments), there was an unfortunate period when European science and Chinese science were both not very good, for two different reasons. Then the Jesuits came to China to reteach science (especially astronomy) the Chinese had forgotten, centuries before the science came to Europe. (Needham notes that Chinese science and technology historically advanced steadily, but European science, by the time of the scientific revolution, was far more vital and advanced far more rapidly. Today of course, science is global.)
A very whiggish way of looking at it. And ahistorical way as well.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

To get back to the point, it is indeed a typical example; it just happens to be the (probably) easiest to understand. One could also point to the succession of atomic theory -> quantum theory or the iterations of evolutionary theory which led to the modern evolutionary synthesis. Quantum theory has actually undergone more iterations (protons are no longer considered fundamental particles, for example) but is still called by the same name. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
What is your point?Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
You said that calling it a typical example is misleading, so I described similar examples for you. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
You cited two examples. How does that say anything at all whether the example of the construction of modern physics is "typical" or not? A logical fallacy on your part. Not ironic. I wish that ordinary, day-to-day science operated this spectacularly. It does not, and this is an article on the scientific method, not scientific revolutions so your example is A) not typical and B)not even germane.
The statement in question is about scientific revolutions (it refers to theories, not hypotheses or models), so naturally I gave you examples that were scientific revolutions. The theories I mentioned involved multiple iterations, as I described, so I did not just give you two examples. For that matter, the example in question (Newton) has further iterations itself (first special then general relativity).

By the way, having looking at the statement again - the article doesn't call it a "typical" example anyways, only an example, so this point is moot. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Really? You sure? Look at the topic of the page and tell me if it says that his is an article about scientific revolutions or the scientific method. Yes exactly, you are giving examples of something that this article is not about. So why should this article discuss scientific revolutions when it isn't even about that?
"Because science builds on previous knowledge, it consistently improves our understanding of the world. The scientific method also improves itself in the same way, meaning that it gradually becomes more effective at generating new knowledge. For example, the concept of falsification (first proposed in 1934) reduces confirmation bias by formalizing the attempt to disprove hypotheses rather than prove them. (Karl R. Popper (1963))"
- deleted, with text to transition to falsification.
This is a highly idealized claim that assumes that scientists are not like other mortals, and can filter out all personal, social and cultural bias. Employing cognitive tricks to filter out bias is also something commonly done on a daily basis by non-scientists.
I agree with that statement; Popper has taken the day, but Ludwik Fleck would have agreed with you.
So we can agree to change it?
Assuming the author of that sentence does not object, fine.
Who is the author?
Arc, I believe.

Again, no surprise there.
Again, the text does not make the claim you say it does. I will comment on this below. (I'm not following your "no surprise" comments.) Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
No? Show me how.
"The goal of a scientific inquiry is to obtain knowledge in the form of testable explanations ..."
- rhetorical change: 'A goal of any scientific inquiry ...'
You disagree with this? All science only has a single goal?
I do not disagree with it, but again, I did not write it.
So we can agree to change it?
Yes, conditionally as above.
Again, a no?
I'm pretty sure Arc did not write this, but he might have. So another editor may want to speak up.

And if they don't (it is unlikely that person is following this)?

I am interested in what the other goals are. :-) (Other than the goals that trivially apply to many or most professions, like making enough money to live, which is also shared with philosophers, firefighters, etc.) Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, so why does the article say there is a single goal (above)?Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Because then we would have a list as long as the personal motivations of every scientist/philosopher/firefighter (to support one's family, to enjoy oneself, to improve one's skill, to impress one's peer group...), none of which are shared by all members of those professions. In fact, the argument also applies equally to every other profession. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Exactly! Science and scientist have many different goals, not the one single goal that the article says and that you insist it has, despite admitting that it has many. We are making progress!
The personal goals of the individual researcher ought to be abstracted from the science to avoid conflict of interest. This is an institutional matter which is normally not in the purview of the professional researcher (like the old joke "nothing lower than a dean" --Dwight D. Eisenhower). Infrastructure in behalf of the researcher, which is not about method. In ancient times, before Western scientists were professionalized, science was self funded. But even two thousand years ago the scholar-bureaucrats of the Chinese empire were funded, by taxation of the people.

Agreed. The way I would have put it is that it's the only goal that is a characteristic of the inquiry itself. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
"The way I would have put it" is original research. You aren't much into rules are you? So now science only has one goal but it is a different goal?
" This allows scientists to gain an understanding of reality, and later use that understanding to intervene in its causal mechanisms (such as to cure disease). The better an explanation is at making predictions, the more useful it is, and the more likely it is to be correct. The most successful explanations, which explain and make accurate predictions in a wide range of circumstances, are called scientific theories."
- deleted.
"Understanding of reality" isn't a scientific term, nor is it one you will find in scientific works. Science seeks to understand particular phenomena, not "reality". Science cannot understand experiences like love or beauty, which are part of "reality"
In addition, 'dirty pool' and coercion are also reality. But the truth will out, eventually.
Right, there is a lot of reality that can't be considered scientific. Claiming all reality can be understood through science is a dubious philosophical idea with its own long and colorful history that is out of the scope of this article.

"Particular phenomena" are aspects of reality. When something is complex, you study various parts to gradually build an understanding of the whole. As I said above, do you have a better word to use?

Also, potentially as a digression..."Science cannot understand experiences like love or beauty." Search Google Scholar for the terms, adding an additional term such as "sociology" or "neuroscience" to filter out the irrelevant results. They can be studied scientifically just like any other psychological phenomena. Furthermore, one thing history has shown us is that it is generally a bad bet to conclude that particular things cannot be explained by science. Weather, planetary motion, organic chemistry, etc were all once thought to have supernatural components as well. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
For someone who claims to be well versed in logical and cognitive biases, you sure could use a refresher course on philosophy and historiography. Do you want to include sociology and the other "soft" sciences (like political science) in the definition of science here? As for neuroscience, yes there is a lot of neurobabble out there claiming a lot of nonsense. I am rather amazed that you are blind to your materialist bias. The question of what is or is not understandable by science (such as beauty or love) is in large part a question of philosophy (in theory anyway, in practice much of that is certainly not answerable by science). To answer that question, you have to answer the question of whether or not the mind and its thoughts are just the product of physical processes in the brain and nothing more, or whether there is something more that is beyond the physical/chemical/biological. No matter your answer, the answer is one of philosophy, so to say on this article that science can certainly understand things like love or beauty is to introduce a particular philosophical bias into this article. Oh and it is also to do original research by making the article say what you think is true rather than what the sources say, as this topic gets way beyond what any science book is going to say on the scientific method.
I suggest you ask at the science reference desk whether these are legitimate fields of inquiry. The fundamental nature of the mind actually doesn't matter to this question. Anything with empirical correlates can be studied empirically (otherwise, those correlates are not actually correlates). Whether science can study something is a question of whether such correlates exist. You can say that it is impossible to reach a certain point of understanding, and that's certainly a legitimate position; I just said that empirically it is unlikely to be right.

I do intend to include the social sciences when I comment, although I (being a natural scientist) may be inclined not to consider them as much as I should. The general rule is that in the social sciences cannot reach strongly confident conclusions as easily as the natural sciences. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
This article has nothing to do with the social sciences.

As for your statement on history, you demonstrate that you are poorly read in history. No one ever thought organic chemistry had supernatural components, as no one ever thought of creating a separate category for the chemistry of carbon reactions until someone did so.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I am referring to vitalism.

R. G. Collingwood has written that every historian rewrites history himself, so that it is the responsibility of each historian, when evaluating historical text, to view each historical author from the POV of that author. Collingwood's example is the proposition that mountains are inhabited by spirits. Thus some historian from a time when this proposition was believed can be read sympathetically, allowing for our current bias against mountain spirits. Might this a viewpoint you agree with? -- I ask because the scientific view is to take each statement critically, at face value, to be falsified.
When did this article turn into a discussion of historical theory?
Please answer my question. Yes or No. If a binary answer is too alien for you, you are welcome to use more words. It's not theoretical because we have different thought styles and I am trying to bridge the gap. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Do I think we have to read past writers by the standards of their day and not ours? Of course, otherwise we learn nothing about their world. I am not aware of any historians from any time we believed supernatural claims like moutains being inhabited by spirits (like modern historians, they often reports facts as they happened, and wouldn't take a position on a belief of mountains being inhabited by spirits). If a past historian believed something now regarded as false, like celestial spheres in antiquity or the luminous aether in the late 19th century, I certainly wouldn't regard everything else he said as false. But this current dispute has less to do with history and more with philosophy.

I think we are moving way beyond the scope of the topic of this article, but I will indulge your question. It it certainly true that we have different philosophical biases. You have a pretty sharp logical positivist bias, while I don't. You appear to think that our state of knowledge now is as "final" as it has ever been, and we are for the most part closer to understanding "reality" than at any point in the past. What this means is that in the future we will continue along this path, and that past generations have little to teach us beyond how humans get entrapped in erroneous thinking. The experience of history shows this bias not to represent how knowledge actually progresses. It also shows that there is not any one "scientific method" applied in all cases, and that much of the scientific method is less about science as more about structured, ordered thinking. As such, the steps in the "scientific method" have existed as least as long as recorded history. Pliny the Younger, for example, was as much a natural historian (ie biologist) as any natural historian in the 18th and 19th century. Thucydides, Plutarch, and even Bede were just as "skeptical" of tradition and what others claimed as any modern scientist. The lack of historical and philosophical context in this article, as well as the fact that it doesn't represent the scientific method well in any context, is the problem.
Quarkgluonsoup, thank you for answering the R.G Collingwood question. It is consistent with your position on String theory, I am happy to see. ~~By your standards, string theorists well represent the state of the art in science, in our current Age of Science. Doubtless, you expect more good things to come from the string community.~~ I will apply what I have seen confirmed, which I hope you will see represent the shortcomings of my affirming the consequent, in the reprise below.
What exactly does "string theorists well represent the state of the art in science" mean? I don't expect much to come from string theory, and not many others do either.
Thank you for clarifying your position. I corrected my estimate.

"Modified" would be more accurate than "corrected"
"Since every new theory must explain even more than the previous one, any successor theory capable of subsuming it must meet an even higher standard, explaining both the larger, unified body of observations explained by the previous theory and unifying that with even more observations. In other words, as scientific knowledge becomes more accurate with time, it becomes increasingly harder to produce a more successful theory, simply because of the great success of the theories that already exist.^[1] For example, the Theory of Evolution explains the diversity of life on Earth, how species adapt to their environments, and many other patterns observed in the natural world;^[2]^[3] its most recent major modification was unification with genetics to form the modern evolutionary synthesis. In subsequent modifications, it has also subsumed aspects of many other fields such as biochemistry and molecular biology."
- deleted. --this is apparently the reason for the changes?
A highly dubious claim that doesn't describe how science actually works, even in theory. Newton's theory didn't describe new phenomena, but was a new way to describe observations of the physical world known long before Newton's time. Again, written like it is for a high school term paper.
Thomas Brody, The philosophy behind physics is the source for "any successor theory capable of subsuming it must meet an even higher standard, explaining both the larger, unified body of observations explained by the previous theory and unifying that with even more observations", as are Goldhaber and Nieto.
Yes, and numerous other scholars of science, like Peter Bowler, take other views. So we are to represent the views of a single author on this point?
Not to put too fine a point on this, but I mentioned 3 authors above.
What?
Thomas Brody

Alfred S Goldhaber

Michael M Nieto
"Scientific methodology directs that hypotheses be tested in controlled conditions which can be reproduced by others. The scientific community's pursuit of experimental control and reproducibility diminishes the effects of cognitive biases. --- New paragraph --- For example, pre-existing beliefs can alter the interpretation of results, as in confirmation bias; this is a heuristic that leads a person with a particular belief to see things as reinforcing their belief, even if another observer might disagree (in other words, people tend to observe what they expect to observe). ---New paragraph --- A historical example is the conjecture that the legs of a galloping horse are splayed at the point when none of the horse's legs touches the ground, to the point of this image being included in paintings by its supporters. However, the first stop-action pictures of a horse's gallop by Eadweard Muybridge showed this to be false, and that the legs are instead gathered together.(Needham & Wang 1954 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFNeedhamWang1954 (help) p.166 shows how the 'flying gallop' image propagated from China to the West.)"
- 3 paragraphs above deleted.
Scientific methodology often involves field work, for example, which can not at all be said to mean "controlled conditions". Again an overly general statement that may describe the scientific method in some cases, but not in many others. Also, a laughable claim that scientists are (or the scientific method makes them) objective and devoid of cognitive biases. They are deeply influenced by their culture and biases, and this is critical towards understanding science.
Actually, scientific method exploits the weakness and foibles of individual scientists, who can find the weaknesses in the 'party line' of the moment.
Not in practice. Not really even in theory. Like any human institution, it is subject to normal human follies while trying to find ways around them. Some methods are unique but none remove the normal human bias inherent in any human endeavor.
Scientific method institutionalizes the roles of multiple players on the same problem at the same time. Thus weaknesses in one scientist can be exploited by a competing scientist to get at the answer first.
This isn't a defining feature of science compared to other modes of inquiry, and it doesn't typically happen this way in practice.
This feature of scientific method (the use of competition for priority) relies on the use of common, repeatable, standards. For example, the units of measure, to allow repeatable work from the experimental ground up.
The key here is sometimes or even often, not always. Various forms of scientific inquiry, such as ecology, certain areas within biology or anthropology, don't use experimentation at all.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 03:33, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I replied to you below, but your response was an accusation which did not address my response (which comes across as a misreading). To repeat what I said below, some sciences are observational only (what I denoted as 'observational science').

Examples of observational sciences, as I said below, are geology and astronomy, and to speak directly to what you say above, earth science, ecology, the natural history parts of biology and anthropology, etc. In geology, for example, the physical processes are largely thermodynamic, as prior editors (not part of this current discussion) have stated; the hypotheses, in this case, posit specific thermodynamic configurations; thus the predictions in geology consist of specific thermodynamic occurrences which have not yet been observed. The field work of which you speak, corresponding directly to table-top experiments (but which are not, either because of sheer physical scale, or of timescales which far exceed our existence on earth), constitutes what other sciences would have called experiment, and the discovery of the predicted phenomena constitutes progress in geology.

In the same manner, the other observational sciences study corresponding processes which constitute the subject matter of their domain, and the field work, corresponding to experiment, consists of observation and discovery. I am pretty sure that you already know this. Thus I am perplexed about the tone of your responses.

Your suggestion that "sometimes or even often" are adequate formulations for a scientific method is more than stylistic. There is a viewpoint behind this that we as editors ought to explore. John Ziman characterizes science as 'reliable knowledge' which argues for the current style of the article. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 19:22, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the article says that the scientific method always relies upon experimentation, you have admitted it does not, yet you insist on the article saying something you admit is untrue. It is more than stylistic, it is factual.

If it does not happen this way "in practice," how do you propose that it happens? And again, I see no claim that scientists are objective, only that the process of science tends to reduce bias - whether the individual scientists are biased or not. This can be demonstrated both logically and observationally. I also do not see a claim that attempts to reduce bias are unique to science.

Second, field work does not rule out the use of controls. Not all types of controls are always possible, but the most basic type of control is simple replication, which controls for random (non-systematic) errors. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
No one said anything about controls, but a controlled environment. Actually, much that goes on in field work has no controls because it involves no experiment. Before the late 19th century biology was known as "natural history" and most of the work involved making observations of nature, with no experimentation whatsoever. This still happens in biology and geology in various circumstances, and an entire field (anthropology) has spun up where this is the only way to do the work. The fact that you don't know this, and think all science is experiments, is troubling.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
"Controlled environment" = "environment containing controls." It does not mean that every possible variable is controlled; otherwise, nothing would be science at all. Observational studies are included in my comment about field work above. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Exactly, and much science (especially biology) involves observing events in nature, not in comparing them to controls in an experiment. Other areas, such as anthropology, don't even involve that but rather the scientist actually living with the people he wants to learn about and learning through living their life.
As I said, observational studies are included in my comment about field work, i.e. observational studies can be controlled. For example, when replication is omitted, you have anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence from a trained observer or team of observers is greatly superior to other such cases, and can be incorporated into broader scientific investigations, but are still weak individually. I would be willing to call that example a gray area; this will lead into a discussion of the demarcation problem, and we have to accept that there is currently no satisfactory answer to that.
I am really starting to understand why the article is in as bad of shape as it is in. So observational science is always controlled, even when it isn't? When someone just looks, or in the case of anthropologists becomes absorbed into what they are observing, they are using controls even when they aren't? You really don't want to let to of your ideas do you?

By the way, exclusively observational studies are very rare in biology today; even field work usually involves interventions and complex measurements. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Quarkgluonsoup, you are clearly misreading the article. You are reading in statements which are unsaid in this article. In observational sciences like astronomy or geology, the predictions are of observations, and not of a specific table top experiment. There are other articles which clearly state the place of experiment. The article does not state that table top experiments are the only source for new science. (You are cautioned not to misread this. I could expand on this but I do not wish to provoke another misreading until you evince one)
Amusing. You finally admit that not all science is experimentation, and yet still refuse to change the article to say that the scientific method often, but not always, relies on experiment. Given your comments here, I am completely unsurprised that you have this level of doublethink.
Instead of accusations, please address the statement. You couldn't have understood the article if you think the entire article states that experiment is all there is to science. If you think that only a few sections state that experiment is all there is to science, please re-read the offending sections. Then return to this section and make a statement that we can discuss. That does not mean accusations. That means points of substance. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
OK here is what happened: I made a change so that instead of the article saying that the scientific method "must" rely on experimentation, it "often" relies on that. You reverted that. Here you admit that it doesn't always rely on experimentation. What about this do you disagree with?
You didn't make such an edit that I can see. Also, the better edit (rather than changing “must” to “often”) would be to change “experiments” to “experiments and observations” – the second is more precise. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

What about anthropology and ecology which often involve interacting with the topics of study? Even "experiments and observation" don't "always" describe how science is done.
I appreciate this comment; these sciences (anthropology, ecology, sociology, etc.) could serve as counterexample, because very often the subjects of study would then be innocent bystanders with the possibility that the human or natural structures under study risked being destroyed by experimenters in the name of science.
Ah you finally admit that it isn't true that the scientific method "must" always rely on experiment? Let me guess, you still refuse to accept that the word should e changed from "must" to "often".

At this point, it is the responsibility of the sponsoring organization to institute controls and training to prevent coercive interaction, by destructive testing of the subject population for the sake of some hypothesis. I doubt that a principal investigator would allow such a situation in today's environment. You are assuming repeatability here, and destructive testing would fail the criterion of repeatability.
So now you are making the rules rather than just making them up for this article?

I wonder what Pliny or Seneca would have to contribute toward our understanding of the causes of some human or natural structure.
You mean what hey did contribute?

Just to point out that observation does not exclude interaction; in fact, they go together often, in all sciences, and minimizing any effects on the object of study is always an important concern. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Refusing to exclude interaction would maximize he effects on the objects of study, which is sometimes the goal and sometimes not.
"Another important human bias that plays a role is a preference for new, surprising statements (see appeal to novelty), which can result in a search for evidence that the new is true.(ref name="Goldhaber 2010 page=940)"
- deleted.
Tied into the next part
"In contrast to the requirement for scientific knowledge to correspond to reality, beliefs based on myth or stories can be believed and acted upon irrespective of truth, often taking advantage of the narrative fallacy that when narrative is constructed its elements become easier to believe."
- deleted.
Again, a highly idealized claim that holds scientific inquiry to an unrealistic standard while simultaneously denigrating all other forms of human inquiry. Oh and also that dubious claim of "letting reality speak for itself".
However Goldhaber and Nieto observe that an integrated narrative becomes that much harder to overturn or dismiss.
Ideally, but in practice the opinions of these two authors does not reflect what actually happens.
Goldhaber and Nieto is a review article spanning decades of physical results, which goes well beyond opinion.
It is the still the words of just two authors.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 17:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
And presumably the 3000 authors on the ATLAS LHC project, and the 3600 authors on the CMS LHC project count for a lot more, now that supersymmetric string theory is ruled out in favor of the Standard model.
Do you even know what the Standard Model is? It doesn't sound like it from this post. String theory is a proposed way to reconcile relativity with Quantum mechanics. The Standard Model is a model of QM. But then, it has long been clear that you don't know what you are talking about. Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 03:37, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I am answering Yes (I have taken too many QM courses. Please do not take that to mean that I claim authority.), but I would disagree with your characterization of the Standard Model. The standard model is a scheme of unification of the current particles. The Higgs completes the scheme. The man who predicted that the Higgs would have a mass of 126GeV in 1987http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=198224 now cautions the LHC community that a mass desert is a distinct possibility, up to the Fermi and Planck scales, a prediction which counters the abundance of particles predicted by superstring theory. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:34, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes the standard model unifies the three fundamental forces of QM (EM, SN and WN). It says nothing about the fourth force, gravity. String theory seeks to unify the four forces, which the standard model does no. So the two are not interchangeable as claimed above.
Except that the Higgs provides a mechanism for mass of the W particles, and Z particle, and thereby gravitation. But I see parts missing from your argument "It say nothing ... as claimed above." So I have to wait for the rest of your argument to complete. __Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 20:10, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
And Higgs has nothing to do with String theory or the unification of QM with relativity.

Please refrain from accusations and return to points of substance about the article. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
That is what this entire discussion has been about.
"Myths intended to be taken as true must have their elements assumed a priori, while science requires testing and validation a posteriori before ideas are accepted."
- deleted, but the text falls apart here.
Why are non-scientific modes of inquiry being labeled as "myth"?
I don't understand your response. A myth, when accepted by all members of a community, then serves as a blind spot in cognition or understanding. There can be myths accepted by all members of a scientific community as well (think String theory!).
What does myth have to do with the scientific method. True, mythology is something the scientific method is not, but then there are many other things the scientific method is not. Why list the ways science is different from myth but not the ways in which science is different from everything else that is not science?
Scientific method is a way to work past myth, past blind spots in our cognition.
Why are the scientific method and myth the only two ways of understanding the world? That makes no sense at all.
I don't believe the article claims there are only two methods of cognition, or of belief.

As per Ancheta, I don't see anything that says myth and the scientific method are the only possibilities. That said, while it seems a useful contrast, I wouldn't object to "Instead of having their elements assumed a priori" instead. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Why suggest at all that non-scientific reasoning typically assumes things a priori? Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I hope your answer to the R.G. Collingwood question will help us. Given his viewpoint, I can see how you might answer to 'things a priori'. But I have only a guess right now and I am waiting to see how you answer, to confirm or disprove my guess. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I just answered it above. I think you might confuse two topics here. Your question above was if an ancient author believing in mountain spirits necessarily meant that everything else he said should be ignored. This is a question of historiography. When you mention 'a priori' reasoning, it seems you are asking if their is anything intrinsically wrong with that kind of reasoning, which is a different question entirely. Whether all modes of inquiry are either "scientific" or "a priori" is a completely different issue, and more what we have been disputing.
Arc, my question about R.G. Collingwood was to clarify how deeply how deeply Quarkgluonsoup uses history, and I am happy to say we have a historically-minded editor here. Welcome to Quarkgluonsoup, of course. My guess was confirmed. Now to follow up on the dichotomy between a priori and a posteriori, in R G Collingwood's mode of thinking, there is another possibility: it is possible to have an evolving thinker, with a history. For example, reasoning in the face of evidence: Bayesian thinking. "I'm feeling pretty good here" in the face of "the sunset is beautiful", time after time after time.
This article has little to do with history, and the disputes above have nothing to do with history.

I agree that if one were to delete these statements, one wouldn't get very far in the practice of science, and it would become very difficult to make a scientific statement. So how do these deletions improve the article? The edits are apparently meant to revise out the references to myth? I have to say that, as scientists go, it is very important to demarcate what is known and what remains unknown. Similarly, if, in examining one's position on a topic, one discovers that some element of one's belief is not founded in reason, then one must admit to oneself that one believes in some myth, possibly handed down by one's community (what Ludwik Fleck denoted one's thought collective). This is not necessarily a bad thing. One just has to acknowledge the myth and get on with one's life. A myth is not a showstopper. A myth can be a good thing if one's life is uplifted by one's beliefs. It's just not scientific. That is no reason to abjure that myth. Our beliefs are what sustain us. That has to be a good thing (I'm assuming good faith here). It should be noted that in History of science the transition from belief in magic to belief in science occurred at the time of the scientific revolution. _Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 21:10, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I remarked on all of your notes above. Oh and to say that magical thinking predominated until he 17th century after which time "belief in science" completely replaced it is a dialectic that is outright false. "Scientific" thinking has existed throughout human history, and "magical" or "mythical" thinking has as well, up until the present. Likewise, the article claims that non-scientific modes of inquiry are all necessarily "mythical" which reflects a great deal of historical illiteracy.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 00:07, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

As an example of mythical/magical thinking, Zhang Heng actually produced a useful scientific instrument in 132CE. When one examines the replica, dragons (celestial forces) hold bronze balls, which spit out a ball, when disturbed by an earthquake, one of which is caught by the respective bronze frog, who then clangs to announce the direction of the source of the earthquake. His theory involved Qi, a celestial force, I believe.

And how is belief in super strings different from Qi? If belief in something unprovable makes something unscientific, then no human line of inquiry is scientific. Even science (along with all other modes of human inquiry) rests of a set of unprovable assumptions (such as the belief that reality exists, that it can be understood, or that anything does or does not exist beyond experience).

Thank you for responding. There is an approach that allows us to examine unproved assumptions, discussed in the article, which I encourage you to re-read.

So String theory is unscientific?

Giambattista della Porta, convenor of the first scientific society in Europe, wrote a best seller of the time (the 1500s), Natural Magic, which wouldn't get very far only one generation later, during the time of Isaac Newton (who apparently got his taste for science from children's how-to books of the 1600s).

I recently read a book on the history of science since the 16th century. One of the chapters talks about "the mechanical and the magical" and discusses the fact that these distinctions (between the quantitative such as much of Newtonian mechanics and the qualitative such as chemical reactions or electricity) has always existed. Remember, Kepler's belief in magic drove his scientific work, while Newton and Galileo both had stronger interests in astrology than science. The "magic" of the early modern period referred to a view that nature had certain innate properties that could not be understood through simple mechanics. Any (scientific) study of electricity or magnetism back then fell under the purview of magic rather than mechanics. The point is that your dim understanding of history is completely unsurprising.

Please refrain from accusation. Jacob Bronowski has stated an analogous view about the relation between Science and Art. Then there is Arthur C. Clarke's statement "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

I have to mention Francisco Sanches, who wrote That Nothing is Known (1581), in reaction to Aristotle. He was on the lookout for a method of knowing, and named the subject 'scientific method' (Spanish).

And your point?

He was searching for a scientific method. Otherwise, nothing is known.

That is philosophical logical positivism, and completely irrelevant for this article.

I hope it's OK to keep the numbering in the list? If so, I can reply inline. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 00:26, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 00:28, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I think that answering within the numbered items will make for better readability for others, as well. But the numbered items can serve as a sanity check for later. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 01:42, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

OK. I responded to your statements above.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 03:03, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I think I responded to your points as well. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 04:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

You missed a bunch of them. On the rest you really didn't respond as much as repeat what you already said. You seem to have an odd fixation on logical and cognitive fallacies. Very ironic.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 05:01, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I deliberately did not bring up String theory in any illustrative examples. For me String theory serves as cautionary counterexample; if you count String theory as science, you should seek disproof, not corroboration, in order to avoid confirmation bias -- please note that seeking disproof is a way to advance a science, by opening other venues, by opening our minds to a more productive path. Shing-Tung Yau has written of his successes which began with seeking disproof of some statement. To me, it is ironic that you discount disproof. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:56, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

String theory is considered by all to be science.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 17:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, if you accept that SUSY is ruled out in favor of the Standard model. A science which has just admitted some of its predictions were falsified. That actually admits the String community into the realm of observational science. That also allows us to drop the title Theorist, and to use the title scientist instead, as you correctly claimed. __Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 23:39, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought you said your little friends disproved string theory in favor of the Standard Model (a statement that displays a poor understanding of what either mean).

Quarkgluonsoup~~plasma~~, Please be careful with your statements. If you reread the above, you will notice that it is predictions that are disproved, and theory that is ruled out. It is demeaning to the CERN community to belittle them. There are senior physicists who note that in light of the current experimental data, it behooves the current generation to rise to the current situation in physics. It is not shameful to be wrong, in physics. The community is in it together, because the community has a common goal: an increase in understanding of nature / the universe / particles etc. __Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 05:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Who is Quarkgluonplasma? Yes, and please show me where String theory has been disproved? I must have missed the news that day.

Sorry for the freudian slip (I was thinking about the physics project) when I was writing to you. I picked up on the implications for supersymmetry when the LHC results were announced. As I wrote above, senior physicists have advised that community to step up their game and rise to the occasion.

This right here is problem number one with this article. "I picked up on the implications" is original research. I can link you to the article on Wikipedia's prohibition of original research on its articles if you want. You can't turn this article into and article on your own views of how the scientific method works (which is what it is now). The article has to represent current scholarly mainstream literature on how it works, through quoting and paraphrasing.

I should comment (since he probably won't mention it) that Ancheta is a Wikipedia administrator, and is likely to know the policies quite well. This is not directly relevant here, since admins are the same as regular editors in content discussions, but I would still be careful in accusing him of policy violations. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

No, one becomes an admin by being experienced on Wikipedia, not by being knowledgeable about the rules.

Hi! Sorry for the delayed response - just to let you know that I will make some comments in the next day or two. Thanks for being patient. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:42, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

General points:

-You seem to be consistently misreading the article, especially in saying that various statements claim that scientists are objective. I don't see this claim anywhere, only that the scientific method calls for us to try to be objective. The entire power of the scientific method is that it produces results in spite of scientists' individual mistakes and biases. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, like in lede "Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible in order to reduce biased interpretations of results" as well as all of the statements suggesting that the scientific method weeds out all bias (or more than other forms of human inquiry). I am not misreading it, but reading it the way it is. I am sure you didn't mean it that way when you wrote much of it, but hat is how it is written.

To take the quote you gave as an example, "Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible..." I do not see a statement to the effect of "Scientific inquiry is objective," or indeed anything that says "The scientific method removes all bias." Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

And much human inquiry outside of the scientific method is that way as well. What about the scientific method makes that notable over other forms of human inquiry?

You have shifted to a different topic. However, feel free to start a new section with the specific changes you would like to make, and we can discuss your new question there. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

That would seem to be common here.

-There has been a lot of debate on whether string theory is science, and some of your points are precisely the arguments used (e.g. Lee Smolin, at least as of 2006) - but in the last couple of years there have been some further empirical developments, as Ancheta pointed out. Second, as a correction, it has always been based on experimental data. The problem has always been that it is the same experimental data that also supports GR and QM, and that it has not made new predictions that would distinguish it from the others (that are also testable with current technology). Also, it is not as if physicists have never attempted to figure out how to test it - there is a section on this at String theory. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

No there is no experimental data on string theory. You are assuming that second and third degree inferences from experimental data in other areas of science count as experimental data for string theory. You even say that the experimental data for GR and QM count for ST. Since all of physics is founded in either GR or QM, your logic would ipso facto lead to the conclusion that all physics, no mater how speculative, is based on experimental data. This renders the entire point moot. There is no experimental evidence on ST. What makes it unusual (and makes people question whether it should be considered a science) isn't that, but that it may be untestable. Yet it is still considered a science.

To repeat myself, not all scientists consider string theory to be science, and I gave you a prominent example. (I do not know whether the more recent developments have changed anything.) I actually did not say that the experimental data for GR and QM "count" for ST; in fact, I described why it did not. As I said, ST is based in experimental data, in that if it failed to account for the data that was already known, it would have been rejected at the beginning - but this data is only minimally relevant to testing ST's validity. After this point, no hypothesis can become accepted as correct without experimental data on new predictions. And it is not as though the string theory community concluded that they were correct beyond doubt; if they had, nobody would consider it science.

Yes, all of science is based on experimental data in this sense. There are no scientific hypotheses that do not have some relation to the knowledge we already have. The rest is mathematics or philosophy. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

All human knowledge has some relation to the knowledge we already have. So by your logic, all human knowledge and inquiry is scientific?

I intended to specifically imply scientific/empirical knowledge, i.e. knowledge based on empirical data. But besides that, science has other requirements, as described in the article. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

So the difference between scientific knowledge and other forms of knowledge is ha the former is scientific and the latter is not? Nice circular argument. I believe there is a logical fallacy article on that particular fallacy you just made.

One thing I have learned from all of my reading, and this is something you should learn too, is that rarely do broad and general claims describe things well. To say that "science always relies on experinmental proof" is to ignore a vast body of science that achieves its ends through other means (such my comment on anthropology and pre-20th century biology above). You want to understand science from the standpoint a Theory of Science. I understand that theory, but the picture is quite incomplete without understanding how science actually works.

The general claims describe things well enough for us to make accurate predictions. Exceptions are always expected. The degree to which general claims apply is another of the main differences between the social and natural sciences, which you alluded to above. While one may propose hypotheses, potentially very complex ones, it is not science until it intersects with experimental data. (Although, if you propose an explanation of the world with the honest intention of testing it, or figuring out how as soon as possible, and not believing that explanation until those tests are complete, I would probably still call that science.) Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

And so is String Theory, which isn't just untested but untestable, science? It is considered science by almost everyone, but your definition would say it isn't science. Which is it?

You have repeatedly been told that a) it is not untestable, b) it is not untested either, and c) it is not considered science by "almost everyone." Furthermore, my description (which was not a definition) did not exclude string theory, and the untested string theory of a few years ago was placed in a gray area. It's still possible to make other arguments against it (e.g. see String theory#Criticism), but we have already discussed these ones. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you two think it is not untestable, which doesn't change the fact that it is untestable. Odd that your armaments don't resound very far beyond this discussion. Oh and it is untested (by your 'logic' above, all science is testable by virtue of it being science, rather than the other way around, which is probably why no one agrees with your fallacious logic). Oh and it is considered science by pretty much everyone, though many have trouble with this because it is untestable.

-A focus on logical and cognitive fallacies is a good thing, in my opinion. I wish that people would do it more often, and in more circumstances. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

This article isn't about fallacies, and they have no place here.

I was referring to discussion of fallacies in discourse, not in the article. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

The best thing to overcome fallacies of any type is broad knowledge, not being aware of each possible fallacy.

"Discussion of fallacies" doesn't have to refer to the specific named fallacies, just errors in reasoning. A large knowledge base (that does not itself include knowledge of good reasoning) only protects you from those errors which involve ignorance of that knowledge, which is not an error in reasoning in itself. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Nothing you said was an answer to my statement.

- I generally object to your attempts to replace "must" with "should." The differences under consideration are generally defining differences. Are the borders of science blurred? Of course. String theory, for quite a while, has been a good example - but that doesn't change the requirements. I wouldn't object to "needs to," but "should" (and "ought") make the statements sound closer to optional. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I have above given many other examples above of science not relying on experimental proof. The fact alone that the word "must" is used is enough to raise red flags. You really don't have a good understanding of how science works out of your narrow circle do you? You assume that the way you think it works in your experience is how it works generally. It doesn't, and this article is full of statements that should raise warnings even to someone with limited experience as long as they have a decent understanding of common human fallacies (logical and otherwise).

The places where you attempted to replace the word "must" were not referring to experimentation. For example, the second sentence of the lead says "must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." This includes observational studies.

And as I said, "must" only implies to me "this is generally a required criterion." I'm fine with any other wording that captures the same meaning. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

How about "is often"?

Thanks for making the proposal. However, I don't think that conveys the sense of "requirement" - although "needs to" or "necessary to" (or indeed "required to") would be fine. Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

You don't agree? Why am I not surprised?

-I don't think you've said anything that tries to justify the NPOV tag. Which point(s) of view are under- or over-emphasized? Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I have said a lot. I have certainly "tried to justify the NPOV tag". Odd that you dispute me on an obvious point of fact (whether I have "tried" to do something). But I also know enough about human nature to know that you made up your mind when you first saw my edits, and that all of this discussion here was always for show as you were not about to be persuaded that your opinion then is wrong. I doubt you are aware of this, and see yourself as perfectly open to persuasion in whatever direction the facts lead you, free of bias. Very ironic for someone so obsessed with logical fallacies.

You skipped over the word "think" in my statement; I didn't make a statement of fact. My opinion was that you hadn't directly tried to answer the question I asked: which point(s) of view are under- or over-emphasized? As the discussion has continued I have a better guess (presumably the same biases you keep saying that we have) but that wasn't clear before. A short summary paragraph would still be helpful.

I do not claim to be free of bias, and in my opinion nobody should do so. Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you aware of your logical positivist bias?

I am not a logical positivist, so that would be rather strange. As per Ancheta, please refrain from accusations. Could you provide that summary paragraph? Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh you very much are

Can we please call #Time out?

-In several cases, you deleted multiple sentences at a time while only objecting to one or two of them. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is not just sentence by sentence but claim by claim.

Could you please explain what you mean? Arc de Ciel (talk) 23:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

The references to myth for example. The problem is any claim that establishes a dichotomy between science and myth, as if all non-scientific inquiry is ipso facto mythical.

Thanks for clarifying. But to take another example, what about the deletion of the three sentences containing the "understanding of reality" phrase? Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

What of it?

Quarkgluonsoup, it is customary to rewrite rather than delete. It's easier to understand when one can read a completed parallel reformulation of the article in one go, rather than to watch an article being rewritten under construction in real-time. Perhaps the current process we are engaged in can be viewed as an opportunity to step back with the knowledge that we will have readers for our work. One technique is to announce the existence of a parallel, independently written reformulated article on this talk page, or in a 'see also' link on the article page. Please note the message at the top of this talk page: there have been hundreds of editors of this article. It has existed since the earliest days of the encyclopedia, and it predates the history tools and existing backups of data. It is not true that there are only two other readers of this talk page. That said, disruptive editing is not a good idea. Someone will step in to protect the article. __Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 11:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

-I will likely be able to reply within either one or two days of subsequent replies. Arc de Ciel (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Reply whenever you want. I honestly miss the days, before I read a lot, when I could see the world in such black-and-white terms while being oblivious to my own biases.Quarkgluonsoup (talk) 02:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I will try to do it reasonably quickly. However, if you would revise out the various ad hominem comments, it would be greatly appreciated. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:02, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

^ Cite error: The named reference Brody 1993 44–45 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Hall, B. K.; Hallgrímsson, B., eds. (2008). Strickberger's Evolution (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett. p. 762. ISBN 0-7637-0066-5.
^ Cracraft, J.; Donoghue, M. J., eds. (2005). Assembling the tree of life. Oxford University Press. p. 592. ISBN 0-19-517234-5.

[Brody_1993_44–45-1] Cite error: The named reference Brody 1993 44–45 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[Hall08-2] Hall, B. K.; Hallgrímsson, B., eds. (2008). Strickberger's Evolution (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett. p. 762. ISBN 0-7637-0066-5.

[Cracraft05-3] Cracraft, J.; Donoghue, M. J., eds. (2005). Assembling the tree of life. Oxford University Press. p. 592. ISBN 0-19-517234-5.

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