Questions tagged [scientific-method]

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Resources to learn about the state of academia in the early 1900s?

Was not sure if I could ask this in the Academia Stack Exchange as the question is a little bit meta, so HSM looked like a more appropriate place. Apologies if that's not the case. There is currently ...
Jon's user avatar
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Can anyone recommend sources on the standardisation of research methods in modern (20th-21st c) science?

I’m interested in learning more about how statistical methodology and research design has changed over the course of the 20th and 21st century. I’m particularly interested in ways in which research ...
Know-Nothing-Bozo's user avatar
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2 answers
298 views

Are statistics racist?

Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is a proposition and an area of study of medicine for which I am very fond. However, a few days ago, talking to some friends, I was confronted with a very critical ...
Sullo's user avatar
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1 answer
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Nicollet and the notions of systematic and random errors

I recently read Ken Alder's "The measure of all things" about the first steps of the metric system definition. The project described in the book was the measure the meridian arc between ...
irimias's user avatar
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Are there examples where interpretivist findings have been confirmed by (post-)positivist methodology?

Social sciences, especially sociology, embrace a distinction between interpretivism 1 and (post-)positivism 2. Some social scientist embrace one method over the other and some speak in favor of both. ...
CuriousIndeed's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
451 views

What technology did researchers use to write scientific papers before the computer?

As I'm reading a scientific paper from 1964, I'm wondering how researchers were able to write papers without the use of a computer. Cursive fonts, different font sizes, math, etc. are all present in ...
Mistergrave's user avatar
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1 answer
102 views

Differences between "The Science of" versus "The Art of? [closed]

Suppose you go to a book store and you see two books titled: The Science of Cooking The Art of Cooking Before opening the books, how would you expect them to ...
Roger Costello's user avatar
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Reference Request: Comment about Contradictions Proof Method Related to John G. Thompson

I read in a PDF document where the author made a comment that it is “dangerous” to use indirect proof method/contradiction proof method (as far as I can remember, and of course I am paraphrasing) as ...
Michael's user avatar
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Feynman story: providing two different explanations for the same phenomenon

There's a story told about Feynman in a non-scientific book (whether written by him or another, I don't recall) that I'm trying to track down. If I recall correctly: he's part of a group (perhaps ...
Colin Rowat's user avatar
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72 views

Is there a name for the idea that the limitations on the accuracy of a model depend on the point of view of the observer?

Consider a mouse who lives its whole life in a maze in a lab. If you asked the mouse about its understanding of the universe, it might say "it's 3 inches high and 3 inches wide, has two left turns and ...
nvioli's user avatar
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1 answer
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How close was Hooke to developing a comprehensive system of gravity?

Was Hooke close to developing a physical system of gravity on the same level as Newton. looking at Luka Trkanjec's post on Quora, he insists that Newton was quite overrated in this regard, and that ...
user4281's user avatar
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Real effects long thought to be coincidences

What examples are there of scientific effects or correlations that we now know to be real, and were known about for a long time but thought to be coincidences? To give an example of the kind of thing ...
user7951's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
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Example of: Two researchers working on the same question but get opposite conclusions [closed]

I wish to know about whether such example exists, could someone please help and tell me some stories about this? p.s: Also I wonder why such thing can happen. I wish the two main characters in the ...
Y.X.'s user avatar
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13 votes
8 answers
4k views

Historical examples of "pseudoscience" becoming "science"

What are some historical examples of theories/ideas that were initially labeled "pseudoscience" and later considered legitimate "science"? I don't mean theories or ideas that were initially not ...
user7496's user avatar
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The Greeks did not discover "a single scientific law"

The title is drawn from a sentence in a Jim Holt article, "The Dangerous Idea of the Infinitesimal," now a chapter in his book collection.1 I found this a striking claim, and perhaps true, as the ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
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1 answer
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What is Peirce doing in this pre-Chi-squared example?

In 1878, C. S. Peirce performed a calculation that (I think) would be better done using chi-squared testing — but Pearson hasn’t introduced that yet. What exactly is Peirce doing here in the last ...
JPM's user avatar
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3 answers
218 views

How was the idea of observation error introduced?

The first thing a contemporary student of physics learns is the measurement error. As far as I understand, the idea of imprecision was totally foreign to natural philosophers at least until the end of ...
user58697's user avatar
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Who was the first person to give a definition of the scientific method?

Reading about the scientific method I found that the classical definition I got in school (observation - induction - hypoteshis - experimentation - demostration or refutation and tesis or scientific ...
Pablo's user avatar
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2 answers
704 views

Books on scientific method for laymen

Could anyone recommend books that introduce to a layman science and its method/spirit? In particular, it should talk about what is science, what is the scientific method and why it works. After ...
Equivalent Triangle's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
135 views

Was Newton aware of a nascent inverse function theorem?

More specifically, was Newton aware that given an inverse pair of functions $f$ and $h$ such that $$f(h(x)) = x = h(f(x))$$ about the origin that, for $$(x,y)=(h(y),f(x)),$$ the derivatives satisfy ...
Tom Copeland's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
754 views

Best books/papers on Newton and his mathematical physics

In your opinion, what are some of the best books/papers on Newton and his work that accurately cover the connections between his geometric proofs in the Principia and his development of the calculus ...
Tom Copeland's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
2k views

Did Karl Popper argue against Bayesian inference?

I am somewhat familiar with the works of Karl Popper and his opposition to using past data to induce prospects of future events, however disclaimed as uncertain, AKA historicism. He contributed to ...
amphibient's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
216 views

How and when did the Titius-Bode rule first become known as a "law"?

The Titius-Bode rule's fit to the solar system was a bit clunky at best, and it was not really testable in its day. It could not have been used to predict something else, and then that prediction ...
uhoh's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
970 views

How important was the prediction of Neptune in 1846 for the Oxford evolution debate?

The short story is that based on Kepler's and Newton's physics, in 1846 Le Verrier mathematically predicted the existence and current location of Neptune within a single angular degree, and it was ...
LocalFluff's user avatar
14 votes
4 answers
428 views

Are there examples of influential scientific articles first rejected and later proved to be valid?

Can you think of examples of influential scientific articles that at first were rejected by the reviewers but where later recognized as a great and influential contribution?
Marco Disce's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
4k views

What was the major influence of Francis Bacon on the development of modern science?

I am reading "Advice for young investigators" by Santiago Ramón y Cajal , in which the author suggested Francis Bacon had made no impact on the scientific development*: "It would not be wise in ...
Shing's user avatar
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3 answers
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Was Isaac Newton the first person to articulate the scientific method in Europe?

Newton is frequently seen as the founder of Western science. Was he the first person to explicitly articulate the scientific method?
Christian's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
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Galileo's pendulum and any references

In some texts about the simple pendulum we use to see references about some "experiments" Galileo Galilei did realize and whereby he found some important results, including that the period of the ...
Poli Tolstov's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why were Newton's laws accepted when there exists a counter-example?

Though the planets of Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn seemed to obey Kepler's laws, Mercury did not. I just found this page which states that the discrepancy was noted very soon after newton ...
Happy Phantom's user avatar
31 votes
4 answers
4k views

Is the Scientific Method uniquely Western?

I'm studying High School Science teaching in Australia. In our Science curriculum there are "cross-curriculum" priorities "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures" and "Asia and ...
pdmclean's user avatar
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What were the cultural attitudes of Indian proto-scientists to findings versus recognition; and knowledge as private property; between 1526 and 1949?

Elsewhere it has been suggested that, between 1526 and 1949, that Indian proto-scientists "were more interested in sharing knowledge with the rest of the world," than in knowledge as private property, ...
Samuel Russell's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
64 views

How did research reproducibility in medicine evolve over time?

Some recent studies have analyzed the percentage of research that is reproducible. E.g. Prinz, F.; Schlange, T.; Asadullah, K. (2011). "Believe it or not: How much can we rely on published data on ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
16 votes
8 answers
9k views

Famous Scientific Conflicts and Controversies

To clear any misunderstandings, I am interested not in the gossipy aspect of the matter (i.e. conflicts that had mainly to do with character-clashes and idiosyncratic psychs) but rather in conflicts ...
Alecos Papadopoulos's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
287 views

What are the earliest accounts of a scientific method?

The ancient Egyptians used examination, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, to the treatment of diseases, which are all described in Egyptian medical textbooks from around c. 1600 BC. Did the ...
WaWaWa's user avatar
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49 votes
5 answers
6k views

Was Occam’s razor ever wrong?

In brief, I am looking for an example where Occam’s razor favoured a theory A over another theory B, but theory B turned out to be a better description of reality later. But let me formulate some ...
Wrzlprmft's user avatar
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