Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
Yeah. That was a little below the belt. Sometimes the credulous desire to defend parochial approaches to science in the name of fair play and "innovation" just make me so ... pissy ...
My apologies for that.
It is unfortunate that you won't respond. I really am intrigued about your revisions to science that will help to accommodate "revolutionary ideas."
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Apology accepted. I understand your desire and I agree with a similar stance.
I think we can agree that the scientific method is comprised of the following steps.
1. Question formation
2. Literature review
3. Form hypothesis
4. Perform experiment and collect data
5. Data analysis and interpretation
6. Draw conclusions
7. Publish results
(8. Profit!!!)
Time tested and the standard for many fields of scientific inquiry. But not the only form of scientific inquiry, historically or from a modern perspective. What I suggest is not even actually revision to science to accommodate revolutionary ideas. I think it is just accommodating ideas using other accepted methods of research. Examples:
Observation - This is still used extensively in the social sciences, ranging from psychology to sociology to the political sciences. This has been used for as long as our species has been around. Some of our greatest discoveries have been a result of using observation over testing. Darwinism is based on the observational method as is the vast majority of anthropological and sociological research.
Bioassay - This is kind of the opposite of what the quackmaster is doing. The bioassay attempts to describe a phenomena based on some outside agent or substance. He is suggesting the reason for the resistance to the disease is a result of this outside agent. You can see research like this in many "unscientific" approaches to explaining cancer clusters, poisoning because of environmental causes, etc.
Process flow - An iterative approach that has a structured component, but doesn't rely on the classical scientific method relying on data collection and analysis. Testing and retesting actually takes place
Pattern matching - A method that has been used extensively in the social sciences and is gaining a lot of traction in data analysis using computer processing and examining massive data sets.
Inquiry wheel - I'm not really familiar with this method but I had a student request the use of this method for developing their research questions and their capstone. From what I was told this is becoming a popular methodology in undergrad classes because it is taught in a lot of high schools. From what I have read it is a dumbing down of the scientific method and an integration with continuous improvement process.
Genetic screening - I think this is what the quackmaster is actually suggesting he followed to come to his conclusions. He selected a population and looked for mutations that would/could explain what he was observing. This is a fairly modern approach and has been used by scientists, some with scrupulous backgrounds or histories, to come to conclusions without doing modern sequencing.
I think that these can be the basis for valid research. That doesn't mean it is the end of research. I think that further research and testing can be done using a number of research methods. For validity you are going to have re-test using the same method, but it doesn't mean that all research has to follow a similar research method. I think that great ideas can be founded on one type of research and then furthered by another method.
Rip away.