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This 3 page paper defines the scientific method and the steps comprising it, and describes an experiment that uses this method. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVSciMet.rtf
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representation of the world" (Wolfs). The scientific method came into being because people recognized that beliefs, whether cultural or personal, can "influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural
phenomena" (Wolfs). The aim of the scientific method, then, is to standardize both procedures and criteria to minimize the influences of beliefs on the formation of theories. In sum, "the
scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing an hypothesis or a theory" since, in the words of a famous scientist, "Smart
people ... can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view" (Wolfs). There are four steps to the scientific method. The first is to observe and describe
"a phenomenon or group of phenomena" (Wolfs). The second is to formulate a hypothesis to explain the phenomena that have been observed (Wolfs). The third step is to use the
hypothesis "to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations" (Wolfs). The final step is to have independent experimenters perform additional experiments to
see if the predictions hold true (Wolfs). That is the essence of the scientific method: that anyone can read the original data, repeat the original experiment and get the same
results; and those results will hold true no matter how often the experiment is performed. "If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a
theory or law of nature" (Wolfs). If the repeated experiments do not return the same results, the hypothesis must be modified or discarded entirely (Wolfs). Further, theories which cannot be
verified by testing must be discarded as well (Wolfs). Scientists make several common mistakes when they test hypotheses; the "most fundamental error is to mistake the hypothesis for an explanation"
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