Study+guide+1

Question 5
Q. If you could tell people one thing about science, what would it be?

A1. Science is a way of thinking about, or critically analysing, the world around us. It uses clearly described, repeatable experiments to test hypotheses, and uses many related hypotheses to form theories. Theories, however well established, remain merely theories which are subject to constant fine tuning, rewriting, even debunking. As the study guide suggests, "a scientist must be objective, and not biased or with any preconceived ideas".

Ryan Telford.

Is that O.K.?

Comment from Mary: Yes it is fine, its one of those questions to which you can't really give a 'wrong' answer. Lucky you. But I've edited it a bit. Edit is trivial. I have comment on your 'merely theories'. In daily conversation we often dream up a theory on the spur of the moment, or in the course of a week, and we know that these are 'merely theories'. But in science an idea doesn't get to be a theory until there is a huge weight of evidence in its favour (until then it's an idea or, when a bit better developed, an hypothesis). I think this is one of the ways in which people seeking to undermine science win debating points - they say that climate change/evolution is 'merely' a theory. So I would delete the 'merely' from your answer.

If I could tell people one thing about science it would be what I learnt fromk Assignment 1, and that was having the ability to discover and invent something new, and I think this is the most important part of science, because this is what people experience everyday with medications, driving their cars, and numerous other activities which they carry out on a day to day basis are because of scientists have invented things that allow them to do so. -Stacey Mussared

Nicola sarahs answer - inserted by Mary on Nicola's behalf:

A2. It's about how and why, simply, it's about knowing what you want to find out, setting out how you are going to discover it, carrying out the experiment and then coming to your conclusion.

A3 Thank you the invitation to comment Dr. Lush. It is my pleasure.

Science is an exclusively human pursuit. It demands discipline and rigour. It generally starts with an observation, usually in nature and accounts for one of my favourite saying "Study nature not books" (Louis Agassiz - Professor of Natural History at Harvard).From observation to the formulation of some thoughts and then to hypothesis, its null and the testing etc that Ryan refers to in A1. The question I like about science is can it be value free? Can there be science for science sake - pure science? There is a great debate in the science community on this question. My personal opinion is that science cannot be value free because humans are not value free. The obsearvations that we make and the opinions and hypotheses that we formulate and test are all subject to our innate and developed perceptions and connotations and as disciplined and rigouous as we might be in our science we are still subject to human frailty. Indeed I would take the argument one step further and say that paradigm shifts would be less common in science if science were not the subject of such frailty. For anyone wishing to pursue the subject simply type "value free science" into your favourite search engine. There is one true believer - Louis Wolpert, you might have a look at his thoughts.

I hope one of the scientists (or budding scientists) in SCI2010 takes me to task on this. Someone who believes that science is pure. After all science is not my discipline, just my hobby. Denis McCann I agree that science is a human construct, but one that has exceptional powers of self-correction. Because it is a human construct we should not be surprised to encounter the usual range of human behaviour including fraud. Some scientists argue that in the long run fraud is unimportant because in the long run it will be corrected.

A4 I'm just finding my way around here like everyone I suppose, so I thought I'd have my 2 cents. If I could tell someone one thing about science it's that it helps to reduce the fear of the unknown. Back in the not so old days (and still today), unexplainable events were put down to evil spirits or punishment or reward from a higher unknown being. For example, if an earthquake occurred, it must have happened because the gods were angry at someone or something and that's why hundreds of people died. Through scientific understanding of geology, we no longer have to be afraid the gods might one day strike down on us with an earthquake, but that we can avoid living in earthquake prone areas, or enforce better building regulations to withstand earthquakes in susceptible areas. Therefore people need not beat up on themselves thinking that little white lie they told their mother wasn't the reason why the village collapsed. ChristineMF

Yes, but do you think that it sometimes makes life harder because we have to accept more personal responsibility?

It may be harder in a personal sense considering what we know about human biology now, for example, all the things we are told to eat, not to eat, do this and you'll get cancer, do that and you'll never have children. In the past people happily smoked, drank and were merry, living in ignorant bliss. On the other hand I think life is easier as scientific knowledge takes away some personal responsibility, knowing that it is not our personal fault if one has a child with down syndrome, for example.

Do you think perhaps that science gives us a philosphy for life - that we can (and should) manipulate probabilities to favour useful outcomes as much as possible, but there are never any guarantees?

Yes, I do agree with this. I think most people put their trust in science when making choices about their lives and everything we do will have probabilities of having positive or negative effects on our life. I think the word 'probabilities' needs to be stressed when communicating scientific studies though. Some people may read something as "red wine is good for you", but that doesn't mean if you drink red wine you'll live to 100. If you had a heart attack at 50 and you drank a glass of red wine a day, that doesn't mean you should disregard all other scientific information when making health choices, which, I think, is what some people do. As the previous post said, there are never any guarantees.

A5

I tend to agree with Christine above- science, to me, is about discovery and endeavoring to explain, understand or even develop a theory on phenomenon that previously seemed inexplicable. What astonishes me is that with all the years of research, all the technology that has been discovered and is in use and all the great scientists of past and present that there are still, to this day, so much that remains unexplained. We can transplant someone's organ or limb and analyze matter by counting X-ray radiation but we can't explain conclusively whether light consists of particles or waves. A bit off subject but in a nutshell that's how I see science- discovery.

Cheers,

Russell

I asked a non-science person what he would like to know about science and he replied that he would like to know why scientists seem to have superiority complexes and have to keep outdoing each other, and why the public is told one day that for example, red wine has health benefits and the next day there is contradicting information. So, on the basis of my very unscientific research with a study group of one, I would like to tell people that science is not the final word and that the body of knowledge keeps evolving and growing. Research outcomes are what is known at that point in time and can change. As for the superiority complex, I'm not sure that I agree with that but there's nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition, it's what helps the body of knowledge to grow. Karen When should we believe 'science' - the red wine debate? I do thinkthis is a problem for the public, but as science students you know (or will learn) that the things the media are picking up on are part of a debate and they are only reporting one set of findings. The other problem for the public is that science is always provisional. There is always more to know and that needs to be incorporated into our understanding - usually this is incremental creep as theories/models are modified. Sometimes it is whole new paradigms.

A6. Most non-scientists, that is the majority of people, do not understand the scientific processes. In particular the null hypothesis and falsification. So they may be confused about apparent "changes" in scientific findings. The other problem is media reporting and the use of statistics. Some of the problems here might become apparent as we investigate media reports and then look at the underlying peer-reviewed paper. The media only sells if it sensationalizes. Anyone interested in further looking at this area try a book called "Seeing through Statistics" - by Jessica M Utts. It's a Thomson Brooks/Cole publication and should be in the library. It offers some fascinating insights into the misuse and abuse of stats - not all of which misuse and abuse is practiced by the media.

Denis McCann

A7. For me, science is a practical application of a psychological desire to know how things function. The word 'function' can be exchanged for operate, work, exist, are made up of and many more. I think this is the primary difference between scientists and non-scientists in that a problem posed has to be explored and not just accepted. Science has form and structure in that it's practise requires sequences that guarantee credible results. Faced with a problem to be solved, the scientist develops a hypothesis and proceeds to test it. The experimental design must be such that it allows failure in the event that the hypothesis is wrong. Results are studied, presented discussed and future experiments possibly modified; building on the knowledge gained in the first attempt at discovery. This careful approach of scientific method allows certainty, even if only in the moment it has been demonstrated.

Gretta Urquhart

An interesting thing about many branches of sceince is not certainty but probability. We often make statements that the results are significant at 0.05 (5%) level. Some people seize on this and say it means there is doubt, as indeed it does. But then they use that doubt to reject the suggestion. This sometimes means they decided to follow a course of action that has 1 in 20 chances of being correct instead of one that has 19 chances in 20 of being correct. It's not rational. Another point that interests me is that I suspect people who reject something at say 5% (usually because it doesn't suit them), in fact live lives that are much less certain than this but the probabilities associated with different courrses of action are either not known or undefined. At least some in the climate change denial box are involved in making business decisions with much less certain outcomes. Dennis might disagree. Mary