Theories and Hypotheses

This is the beginning of all science right here, I mean, how can you even begin to start an experiment, trial, test etc, without guessing what the outcome might be?  This ultimately gives your experiment some direction.

Hypothesis-

As I explained last time, this is your best guess as to the outcome of your experiment. Was the light bulb out because it was bad? Was there some other reason?  If you will recall, the primary rule of ALL hypotheses is that they MUST be testable and they must be able to be proven false. Its all well and good to hypothesize that there is a planet consisting entirely of tiny green men orbiting a distant star, but given current technology there's no way to test for it; you can't prove it to be true and you can't prove it false either. Ultimately you are at an impasse and have shown nothing.

Once you have completed your study your hypothesis can either then be used to modify a current theory, or in the creation of a new one.


Theories-

A typical theory will be the simplest explanation for a given set of data or a particular phenomenon. Like hypotheses, theories should be plausible and able to be tested and expanded on.  Any scientist should be able to construct a study that will test a given theory. The purpose of a theory is to explain or predict observed phenomena or data, what started out as a well researched prediction (aka hypothesis), and now has the support of evidence and research to back it up. The more research and evidence you have which agrees with your theory, the stronger the support for it becomes. This is why the theory of evolution is one of the strongest theories out there– it has an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence and research which supports it. After over hundred years of research it is one of the most "complete" theories in existence.

Theory or fact?

Unlike what you may typically think of as the meaning of theory (an educated guess), scientific theories are formulated in order to explain verifiable observations (a.k.a. facts, ex: a ball will fall to the ground when you drop it). These facts are considered to be true under all conditions (ex: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west). Theories are then used to explain these relevant observed facts (how come the ball falls to the ground?). There typically will always be an instance in which a theory does not hold up so a scientist will never present his theory as a fact. An important thing to remember in science is that nothing will beyond a doubt under all conditions be proven to be true, only supported by the evidence. There will always be at least one condition in which your theory will fail to be true.

An example: You have stated that all birds can fly, you state this is a fact.  You could study thousands of birds, all of which fly, never finding the one that does not, but there will always be the chance that you will find one that does not fly.  All you would need in this instance is to find one bird who cannot fly (a kiwi or an ostrich for instance) and your fact is no longer true. However, if this were a theory, you would have the support of many birds that had been observed flying; your theory could be revised to state that  most birds fly, with the exception of a minority which appear to have lost the ability.

The Scientific Method

While I would hope that most of us learned about this as part of your standard education (I learned it in middle school), I will review it in case you are a little rusty.

The scientific method is the set of steps each scientist needs to go through in the course of their research.  You probably don't realize, but this is something we as humans do inherently quite often. Do you have a light bulb out?  What are the possible reasons it could be out? Is it simply burned out? Is the electricity off? Is there a wire loose? You then decide that your light bulb is out because the bulb has burned out, your next step will be replacing the bulb to see if the light comes back on.  Does that work? or if it doesn't will you go back and try another idea?  If you have ever done that or something similar you have utilized the scientific method, it is the method in which we figure out the who, what, why, where and how of something.

The steps included in this method are as follows:

Observation- (You observe your light bulb is out)This has been the beginning of many a scientific study, by observing a phenomenon that you or someone else may not understand. Think about what you would like to know about this particular phenomenon. How did it happen? Why did it happen? Who or What made it happen?  Where does this happen?  Your next step will then be research, research, research.

Research-(You look up possible reasons a light bulb may have gone out) It may be that what you have observed has already been extensively researched, you can find the answers to the questions by reading a book or an article already written on the subject.  The next thing any scientist will do when they find something that interests them is to find out everything they can, anything that has already been written.  The most common way they will do this is to read through many peer reviewed journal articles.  These are articles that have been read by a group of a researchers, peers and judged by them to be an adequate study.  While other articles may carry useful information, peer reviewed journal articles will lay out a previous researchers study, they will show their hypothesis, testing methods, results and conclusions.  Research that is not carried out adequately is not typically published in journals, while it is not a fail safe method of finding a good study it is the best method of looking at what other people have done and guaranteeing some form of quality control. Peer reviewed articles can also be useful in that they will likely be the most current research on a particular subject.  It is important when looking through articles that you take note of when they have been published because this can affect the accuracy of their research (it may be that a study with a different or better result was posted later on). Once you have found many articles on the subject you are interested in you can then form a hypothesis.

Hypothesis-(You decide your light bulb has burned out) This is the next step in your study, this is what you think will be the outcome of your study, the reason you think your observed phenomena is happening.  The number one important thing about your hypothesis is that it MUST be falsifiable.  This is why you see many scientists becoming frustrated over the argument about whether there is a god or not.  There is no way to prove there is no god, the hypothesis is unable to be falsified, it cannot be tested.  I will go more into hypotheses and theories in my next blog.  Once you have your hypothesis to work from, the next step will be testing that hypothesis.

Testing your Hypothesis-(You try replacing your light bulb) This is where you craft a study that will allow you to test your hypothesis.  I have enough to say on testing conditions that I will be creating a separate blog about it, there are stringent designs for the proper way to test a hypothesis which will hopefully allow you to come out with a reasonable result.  These involve things such as sample size, placebos, randomization, double-blind studies, etc. The way in which you test your hypothesis will depend on the hypothesis in question, it is important to design a study that has accurate results. Once you are done with your testing portion you will then move on to collecting and analyzing your data.

Collecting/Analyzing Data-(Did the light come back on?) Hopefully you've been collecting data all along while doing your research, but it will be important to organize it in such a way that you can run your statistical analysis on it without any issues.  This is where you determine whether or not your hypothesis is supported or rejected, if your results support your hypothesis then yay! move on to your next step of trying to get your results published or making them known!  If your hypothesis is not supported you can either publish the results of the study concluding that your research did not support your hypothesis or you can go back to the hypothesis and rework it to start the study anew.  You cannot go back and alter your hypothesis so that it supports your results.  You may also take a look at how your study was done to determine whether or not there was something in the testing methods that caused you to get the results that you did, was your sample size too small? was your sample size not random enough? did you do your statistics wrong (this is a common one)? or was there something else?  I would encourage researchers to point out when they find they do not come up with a supported hypothesis as then we more able to define a direction in which to head for further study of a subject. In any case, once you have concluded your analysis of the data your next step will be reporting the results.

Reporting your Results-(You tell the rest of your household you've got the lights back on!) The best way to give your study credence is to have your results published in (you guessed it) a peer reviewed journal article.  In addition to specific guidelines for testing there are also specific guidelines for writing up a research paper.  You will have to discuss the research you did prior to your study, your hypothesis, the methods of research you used and your results and conclusions for the study.  This allows anyone who reads your research to be able to determine whether or not your study was a good one.  chances are if a researcher refuses to release any of their data, though they report results, then their study is probably bad.  The mark of a good study is that you are able to replicate it, and if a researcher refuses to release their methods and research it will be impossible to replicate their study.

Next, we will go deeper into Hypotheses and Theories!

First Post!

we'll see how this takes off, it is entirely possible I will have this fabulous idea and then let it fall by the wayside.

In any case, the reason for creating this blog is to hopefully educate some people about the basics that come with science as well as the topics we see most frequently covered in the media.  Typically I have noticed the mainstream media has a poor understanding of science in general and frequently gets its articles wrong. In order to help combat this, I will be covering things we are seeing in the news quite often alternative therapies, vaccines, medicines, drugs, mental illness, etc.

It is my hope that the more public understanding about these things the better we will be able to tell bad reporting from good or good studies from bad.