{"id":153,"date":"2009-12-19T12:09:18","date_gmt":"2009-12-19T12:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idenk.co.uk\/ideasdigest\/?p=153"},"modified":"2009-12-19T12:10:48","modified_gmt":"2009-12-19T12:10:48","slug":"the-scientific-method-for-and-against","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/the-scientific-method-for-and-against\/","title":{"rendered":"The scientific method: for AND against"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In our liberal, rational society there can be a tendency to &#8220;Science &#8211; good,\u00a0other views &#8211; bad.&#8221;\u00a0 But what is science?\u00a0 For us it combines pursuing understanding through observation while suspending personal values.\u00a0 The scientific process identifies a hypothesis and seeks predicted data for AND against it.\u00a0 If it stands up to all or some scrutiny then things are getting clearer.\u00a0 Even disproof is progress.<\/p>\n<p>During the last month we have had The Scientist vs\u00a0The Government (Professor Nutt vs Alan Johnson on Cannabis), and The Scientists vs The Sceptics (on Climate).\u00a0\u00a0Looking in on these debates, it is not clear how far good scientific method is at work all the time.\u00a0 If it isn&#8217;t, then poor process opens the way for other belief systems (public opinion about weed, economic risk assessments of climate reduction).\u00a0\u00a0Just claiming to be \u2018a scientist\u2019 is in no way sufficient to demonstrate that your thinking is superior to that of others.\u00a0 Showing openness of mind in pursuit of knowledge is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our liberal, rational society there can be a tendency to &#8220;Science &#8211; good,\u00a0other views &#8211; bad.&#8221;\u00a0 But what is science?\u00a0 For us it combines pursuing understanding through observation while suspending personal values.\u00a0 The scientific process identifies a hypothesis and seeks predicted data for AND against it.\u00a0 If it stands up to all or some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[50,31,75,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.idenk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}