URI_Research _Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

THE PUBLIC MISUSE of science THE SANCTITY OF SCIENCE:

written by AMY DUNKLE

The process of scientific discovery is based on just a few cardinal principles, including the application of experimental methods to test hypotheses that have the potential to be refuted. All scientists, regardless of discipline and area of expertise, adhere to the same essential steps. They seek to propose important relationships or processes and then plan experiments to test their ideas, prepared to correct their understanding and assumptions based on the success or failure of these experiments. The application of the scientific method allows us to distinguish facts (based on observation and data collection, which are subject to correction as methods or understanding improve) from beliefs (based on imagination, bias, self-interest, or supposition). The beauty of the scientific method is that standard mathematical approaches to interpreting data build in a high threshold for success. Statistically, experiments are less likely to result in successful

discovery than fail to find significant and meaningful results. What this means, in practice, is that the more times a theory or model is supported by additional experiments from differing research groups, the more likely the theory correctly describes real world phenomena. For example, the leading climate change models showing the substantial impact of man-made greenhouse gases on the pace of global warming provide evidence now supported by thousands of studies of many different varieties and across multiple disciplines. These studies have been repeated and confirmed so often and reliably that to suggest otherwise is deliberately misleading and irresponsible. Scientists build histories of supporting empirical research to either support or reject ideas. As the great English biologist and defender of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Thomas Huxley (1825 – 1895), quipped in 1873, “The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” Huxley was trying to be provocative at the time, but his words put into context exactly what scientists

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