Scientific Method

Scientific Method

1. What is it?

   • The accepted procedure for scientific investigations, with its own rules
   • A series of steps w/ the purpose of coming up with an explanation for an observed phenomenon.

2. Steps

   • 1) Observe and Ask a Question.
     • Why do women smile more often?
     • Why won´t my internet work?
   • 2) Do background research.
     • Happiness based on gender, the science of smiling in different cultural contexts.
     • Different networking infrastructures. Internet protocols.
   • 3) Hypothesis
     • Women smile more than men because there are happier than men.
     • The internet isn’t working because the modem has a failure.
   • 4) Experimentation to test the hypothesis.
     • An oposite sex interviewer talking to a set of men and women for 5 minutes each, counting the number of times they smile, and asking them their level of happiness.
     • Check if everything is correctly plugged and doesn’t seem damaged.
   • 5) Analyze the data and draw conclusions.
     • We could have discovered that the router was off. So that was the reason the internet was´t working
     • But also the hypothesis could be incorrect. Or we could find a more interesting question to solve.
   • 6) Spread the information/share
     • A critical step is sharing the results and the specific process that was followed, even if it was a "failure".
     • If the experiment can be reproduced by other scientist getting similar results its a sign of good work.

3. History

   • Greeks were the first ones who used observation and measurement to learn about the world.
     • Some people give credit to Aristoteles, the Muslims who became its promotors or to Galileo Galilei
       • But it is best attributed to Alhazen, the father of optics
         • The process has evolved througth the years along with the interest of people

4. Troubles

   • There can be exceptions, for example when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, it was because he accidentally left a cover off a petri dish used to cultivate bacteria.
   • Sometimes the experimentation migth not have been carried that way although it is presented like so. The process is more like bloks of trial an error.

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