From: Jameliya L. Hall
Date: 06 Sep 2003
Time: 18:55:05 -0400
Remote Name: 10.4.1.51
When I was younger I considered the scientific method to simply be a list of procedures used by scientist to solve a particular problem. I believed that these procedures had to be followed in the exact order listed, and if they weren’t done in that order then the methodology used wasn’t really the scientific method. However, after taking a number of biology courses I’ve come to the conclusion that my view of the scientific method wasn’t exactly correct. I later discovered that there really isn’t a method that scientist MUST follow; but that there is however a list of guidelines that scientist can employ to keep their experiment headed in the right direction. Although I have a general understanding of the scientific method I feel that I don’t have enough knowledge to explain it to someone else. Therefore I looked to another source, and according to a definition that I retrieved from www.dictionary.com; the scientific method is principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration considered characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation. According to this definition the scientific method generally involves the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the hypothesis. Although this dictionary definition gave me even more insight into the scientific method I still wanted to go further, because when researching you may think that something is good, but it is always good to go further. So I visited another website http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method according to this website the scientific method is the way scientist investigate the world and produce knowledge about it. The first step of the scientific method is observation. The second step is to create a hypothesis. A hypothesis is simply the scientist using their own knowledge to come up with a possible explanation for whatever it is they may be studying. The next step of the scientific method is to make predictions based upon the hypothesis. One of the most important steps of the scientific method is verification; because of course the scientist results have to be verified how else will it be determined that these results are valid. In the evaluation process any hypothesis, no matter how respected or time-honored, must be discarded once it is contradicted by new reliable evidence. Based on all the research I’ve done I think that I have a better understanding of the scientific method. Oh yeah I am leaving out one very important step REPETITION. In any experiment it is extremely important to repeat the experiment more than once. This will ensure that the results obtained are indeed valid.
[_borders/disc41_aftr.htm]