January 13, 2015 • 59 mins
It evolved over centuries to become the gold standard for conducting scientific inquiry. Yet many people - including some scientists - don't fully understand it. Learn about the basis of how we explore our world in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Stuffy. Should know
why grinning. It's been a while, man. Know it's funny,
(00:20):
like those words come pouring out of my mouth and
then it's cool. You wake up in the middle of
night saying that, and you mean like slugs you in
the face. She's sleep She has to dry my brow. Yes,
we prerecorded some for December, as we like to do
to take a little time off at the end of
the year and not explain things for a few weeks
(00:40):
in our real lives. Like people ask me things like
what happened to that stick of butter? Yeah, I don't know,
don't ask don't even ask me. I could tell you,
but I'm not gonna exactly. That's how it goes in
my house. Find your own butter. December was find your
own butter money. That's a good that's that's a good one.
That should be a T shirt. Stuff you should know
(01:02):
find your own butter or December is find your own butter.
M Yeah, that's right. Maybe a stick of butter and
some Garland on it. Yeah, I like that. So it's
good to see you again. Man's gonna be back in here. Yeah,
it is nice to be back. As much as the
break was great, I'm happy to be explaining things again.
Well that's good because if we got in here and
you're like, I can't do this, I can't do it again,
we'd be in trouble. Yeah. So I'm glad we're all
(01:24):
feeling good. Jerry, you're feeling good. Jerry's got two thumbs
up in a big goofy smile, two of her three thumbs.
She looks like Bob from that male enhancement pill ad.
Oh see the guy, the old man that's like super Buff,
I would call him old. He was middle aged. He
looked like kind of a Bob Dobbs type dude. I
think that's kind of who he was modeled. You see
(01:46):
the guy that's super muscling. Now I'm thinking of someone different.
I think, are you thinking of Jack lo Lane? No? No, no, no,
just there's some ad. There's some old man that looks
like really creepy because from the next super Buff looks
like it's twenty five year old. No, remember that was
like a male enhancement pill and I'm making air quotes
here for erectile this unsion. Well, there go the air quotes.
(02:06):
But yes, And it was like in the early two thousands.
I think maybe late nineties, but I think early two thousands,
and these ads were everywhere, and there was Bob and
like all these great things happened to him because he
started taking this pill. I can't remember the name of
the pill. But the company like got into a lot
of trouble because it was basically like a subscription service
(02:28):
and like you gave him your credit card and you
got this free trial, but then they started sending it
to you and it was like next to impossible to
cut off service. Interesting, They're like, no, we want your
mailness to be enhanced. So you you've seen these ads.
I was gonna start asking questions, but why bother? I
will I will YouTube. I will find it on YouTube.
(02:49):
I'll be like, oh, Bob, yeah you will. You'll go, Oh,
I want to come back in and record an insert
the guy that's on the back of all these pill
bottles in my bathroom. Oh, chuck, I don't even remember
how we got Oh yeah, Jerry did that. That was
Jerry's fault. But um, you remember we did the Enlightenment episode. Okay,
(03:10):
we talked a lot about how there's this kind of
um tug of war over the human psyche between rationalism
and mysticism. I guess you could you could put it well,
I feel like we're talking today about the scientific method.
Great idea, by the way, Thank you very much. It's
(03:30):
been a long time coming. Um, because I realized, like
I don't understand it as fully as I don't understand science.
I understand the scientific method because it's pretty cut and
dry and it's beautiful and elegant and simple. But then
you just take this thing and it came out of
the birth of rationalism, and when you place it into
the world and make it function, there's a lot of implications.
(03:54):
Is it being used properly? Is it being used responsibly?
Like are we putting what constitutes f E than to that?
You know, like it just raises all this other stuff.
And it made me realize, like I don't understand science
as much as I want to, So researching this it
was awesome. Yeah, and this is a cool episode, I
think because not only are we going to talk about
the scientific method, but we're going to talk about just science,
(04:16):
like what is science in general? And some of the
rock stars along the way, who really you know, laid
out the path remarkably in like many many years ago,
like coming up with these amazing discoveries that still like
hold you know, you can like hold their feet to
the fire for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, because
if you come upon a universal truth, you know it
(04:41):
is what it is, like you got to be the
person who discovered it because you know, you saw it,
you realized it a certain way, but ultimately it was
there already. Yeah, like Newton, I mean, we'll talk about
all this stuff, but it's not like now we're like,
oh Newton, most of what he said was wrong, But
that's understandable because it was a long time ago. Like
his stuff holds up really well. I was wondering if
(05:01):
he on his deathbed was just like, oh, man, I
contributed so much to humanity it's mind boggling, but I
couldn't enhance my malehood. Well, Bob hadn't come along yet,
So Chuck, let's let's just quit stalling and talk about science,
like what is science? Well, I hate the old elementary
school uh defined as, but it's a pretty good place
(05:24):
to start here to get a base definition of science. Yeah,
Old William Harris did a great job with this. Yes,
William Harris did a great job. Uh. Science the intellectual
and practical activity encompassing the structure and behavior of the
physical and natural world through observation and experimentation. Uh So
the first part of that is science is practical and
(05:47):
it is you know, they make a good he makes.
Bill Harris makes a great point in here. It's not
just stuff you do in a lab, and it's not
just for scientists. It is all about being hands on
and active, and it's about discovery and asking questions about
I mean, that's how everything is ultimately solved, is by
someone looking at something and having a question about it exactly.
(06:09):
And then the scientific method comes in when you say,
and this is how you properly get to that answer exactly. Um.
And he makes another good point to that. The idea
that there's a method, a scientific method, makes it seem
like it's it's secreted away among the the fraternity of scientists.
(06:29):
And like you said, any anybody can use it. It's
just kind of part of being a curious human is
it's not even anyone can use it everyone does use it,
you just might not even know that you're using it,
like if you I mean one of the examples that
use later is if like your car overheats, when you
figure out why and fix it, that's the scientific method, right,
playing out exactly based on reasoning. Yeah, okay, and deduction
(06:53):
and induction. Man, there's so much to talk about. Okay,
So let's let's talk about that definition that you had.
So the first part is that science is it's a
practical activity. So science is practical, right, It's it's this, Um.
The basis of the whole thing is discovery. Right, you
see something, You see birds in flight, and you say,
(07:16):
where are those birds going? And if you just went
and laid down on the ground and went to sleep
after that, then you're not you're not carrying out science.
But if you went, I want to find out where
those birds are going, and you follow them and you
start taking notes, that's that is the basis of science
is discovery. Yeah, and that's the observational part as well. Um,
(07:36):
sometimes you're using a microscope or a telescope, sometimes you're
using your eyeballs. But no matter what your tool is, uh,
you're gonna be watching something and recording. What's called data
or data depending on I don't know what kind of
person you are. What do you say I think? I
say both. I think data. Yeah, I don't think I've
(08:00):
don't think. I say data data, I say data data. Yeah,
all right, we'll go with data. You say both. I
feel like it just comes out of my mouth one
way or the other, and I don't really think about it.
I think that's like being ambidextrous. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a
data datas Yeah. Uh so once you are observing this data, well,
there are a couple of kinds. There's quantitative data, which
(08:22):
are numbers, like you know, your body temperature is point six,
although I think that's changed slightly now, didn't it. Yeah? Yeah, there.
You used to be like, if you were a human being,
your body temperature is point six, and they it's like, no,
there's a little more variation than that. But any kind
of just numerical representation is quantitative, whereas qualitative is behavioral,
(08:45):
like I'm gonna watch that bird um eat in poop
for the next week, right, or what happens if I
what will the slug do if I put a bunch
of salt on it? Do you know I don't do that. No,
you really should not do that. No, it's awful. But
the reaction of the slug is gathering qualitative data. And
depending on who you talk to, there isn't qualitative data
(09:08):
and science that it should all just be quantitative because yeah,
because quantitative data is reproducible. Qualitative data is. It's not
necessarily reproducible. You can observe the same phenomenon, but you're
not necessarily controlling it. Okay, well, I guess I get that.
But I agree with Bill here and that they are both.
(09:30):
They go hand in hand, and neither one is more
important than the other. You need to have both. Well,
a lot of people do, and we'll talk more about
it later, because without the idea that qualitative data is
acceptable and scientific, you don't have the social social sciences,
like they don't exist. Yeah, that's a good point, but yes,
we have quantitative data and qualitative data. I agree with you.
(09:51):
They're both useful. Uh. It is an intellectual pursuit um,
So you can make observations on data all day long.
But until you bring reason, in this case inductive reasoning,
which is driving a generalization based on your observations, then
it's just data sitting there on a piece of paper
(10:12):
like it's supposed to lead you somewhere right exactly, And
so we should talk about inductive and deductive reasoning and
it depending. Again, it's really weird, But one of the
things that came across is that there's not a universal
agreement on how science is carried out. Like I saw
some places where there's like there's no place for inductive
reasoning in science. Then other places they're saying, well, you
(10:35):
have to have science using inductive reasoning. Everybody seems to
agree that deductive reasoning is the basis of science, but
that you also have to have inductive So deductive is
basically taking a big, broad generalization and saying that it
applies to something specific more specific. Yes, Uh, inductive is
(10:57):
the opposite where you say, I've noticed these different data points,
and uh, that means that this broad generalization is true.
So you go from specific, small observations to a broad generalization.
And the reason that a lot of people say, well,
inductive reasoning doesn't have any place in science is because
(11:20):
you're saying those birds over there are all brown, Therefore
all birds of that type of brown, even though I
haven't seen every single bird of that type in the world.
I'm saying that all those birds are brown. And a
lot of people say there's no place for that in science. Well,
if you want to go out and prove that, then
that's your business. You know. You can't just say that
(11:40):
and be like and I'm done, right exactly. I guess
you could. But much of scientists, right, but the the
you can use it to formulate hey, hypotheses. Right, so
you can say I've generated all these data points, I'm
gonna put them together and see if this broad generalization
is right. Okay, so there is a place for inductive
seeing science. But everybody says deductive reasoning is the basis
(12:03):
of science. Well, Bill Harris does. Uh. He offers a
great example for inductive reasoning with Edwin Hubble of the
Hubble Telescope. Uh. He was looking through the Hooker telescope,
which at the time at California's Mount Wilson. Is that
the one from Rebel Now that's um Griffith Park Observatory,
(12:27):
which has been redesigned, and uh, it is really cool now, yeah,
I mean it was kind of cool before, but it
was definitely like, uh, sort of the bass music in
the time forgot. Oh really, so they've updated it. I'll
bet that was cool though in its own way. Yeah,
it was neat. I used to live near there, so
it was kind of But that's like the famous one,
at least in the movies. Yeah, that's where they have
(12:48):
the big knife fight. Yeah, and there's this James Dean
statue there too. I didn't like a bust um. So yes.
Edwin Hubble he's at Mountain Wilson and he's looking through
the Hooker telescope, which was the biggest one. And at
the time, everyone said, the Milky Way galaxy is it?
That's what we've got going on. Did you know this? Uh? Yeah,
I knew that because we're talking. Yeah, not that long ago.
(13:11):
Did not realize this. And he started looking through this
telescope and said, you know what, these nebula that everyone
says are part of our galaxy look to me like
they're beyond our galaxy. Not only that, they look like
they're moving away from us. So he made this, uh
with through inductive reasoning, made this observation that you know what,
I think there are many many galaxies out there, and
(13:34):
not only that, I think they are expanding, and uh,
through technological advancement with telescopes over the years, scientists, you know,
it proved to be true. Yeah, pretty cool. So this
is a really good example of him saying, like, I've
made some observations, and now I'm going to say this
broad generalization. Right, So these these galaxies appear to be
(13:56):
moving away from me, not another. So the whole universe
is expanding. Right, that's inductive reasoning. It's a pretty brave thing, uh,
especially back then, because you're really putting your reputation at stake,
you know. So what Hubble was, what Hubble did was
what we've come to see as science. He made some observations,
(14:17):
he came up with a hypothesis, um, and then it
was tested later on. It's not you don't necessarily as
a scientist. You're a part of a larger collective of scientists, right,
And every scientist needs one another. It's why there's journals
and and um conferences and things like that to share information, right,
(14:37):
And the party and the party, and and Hubble came
up with his own observations. And rather than just experimenting, experimenting,
experimenting himself, which I'm sure he continued to do, he
created this basis of work that he probably realized is
going to survive him. Right, And then later on scientists
came down the road and they tested his hypothesis and
(15:00):
they found it was correct, and so his hypothesis became
a theory. It eventually became part of the basis of
the Big Bang theory that the universe started as a
huge explosion and it's expanding still because we're because it
exploded at one point, right, And they did that by
carrying out other tests or experiments exactly. So this is
(15:24):
how science works. Like some guy back in in nineteen
nine makes some observations in California, he proposes this big,
broad generalist generalization, and over the next like ensuing half
a century, more and more scientists all around the world
start testing his hypothesis and find it to be true,
so it becomes a theory. Yeah. Well, well let's finish
(15:47):
up here with science. The last part of the definition
is that it's systematic and it's methodical, and it requires
testing and experiments, and it requires those experiments and tests
uh to be repeated and verified, and it is is
it's a system. It's a way of working things out.
(16:08):
It's a way of working That is the scientific method basically, Yeah,
you have your idea, you pose a question, you theorize
hyper you put a hypothesis out there, and then you
go about trying to either prove it or disprove it. Yeah, exactly.
And then the way that you go about proving or
disproving it, that's the scientific method. Everything else is just
scientific inquiry. The way you go about, the standardized way
(16:32):
of going about scientific inquiry is the scientific method. And
we friend, we'll talk about the scientific method right after this.
(16:52):
All right, you brought up a point. I think we
should go ahead and just get right to my friend.
Let's do hypotheses and theories. One thing to say together, No,
One thing that really chase my hide is, uh, when
you hear poopo ors of whatever scientific theory say, well,
it's just a theory. And you where was this thing
(17:14):
that you found that poo pooed that? Do you remember
what website that was? No? No, although I do want
to give a shout out now that you mentioned it.
Two explorables. It's like an online university basically of free courses,
and uh, there is one on scientific reasoning that is
just amazing. It's like a huge rabbit hole. You go
(17:37):
down and you start clicking on the embedded links and
you end up like understanding all sorts of stuff. So
go check that one out if you like understanding stuff.
So that's one of the things that bug me if
someone says it's just a theory, and this does a
great job of kind of throwing that out the window. Um,
because it's basically mixing up the two definitions of theory. Yeah,
(17:58):
there's like a colloquial definition that people use every day
that it doesn't really have much to do with the
scientific use. Like, I got a theory that Jerry entered
one hour bathroom breaks every day is really playing uh
words with friends in the lobby. I think your theory
is correct. So that's a theory in the colloquial meaning.
(18:21):
As far as science goes, the theory is not just
something you postulate, say if this may or may not
be true. The theory is beyond the hypothesis, and it's
something that is strongly supported in many different ways and
all there's all kinds of evidence to support something that
eventually becomes a theory. Right, So, um, what you your
(18:42):
theory about Jerry's bathroom breaks in the scientific world would
be a hypothesis. In fact, yeah, it would be a
scientific law, but ultimately it would begin as a hypothesis,
a hunch based on intuition, based on the data you've collected, observeyations,
that kind of stuff. Where like, you know, you've seen
(19:03):
that Jerry goes to the bathroom for like an hour
to stretch frequently. When she comes back, she's um finishing
up a game of words with friends. You've heard that
she's been spotted in the lobby during these times. So
your hypothesis is that while she is gone for these
hour long bathroom breaks, she's actually down the lobby playing
(19:24):
words with friends. Right, based on knowledge, observation, and logic. Right,
So let's say that you decided to set up an experiment,
and you experimented, and you went and you found Jerry
playing words with friends five different times, and you told
me about it, and I was like, I'm going to
run that same experiment exactly the way you did, Right,
I would test that same hypothesis. If I found the
(19:47):
same results to be true, then what you would have
come up with, your hypothesis would move to basically a
theory that is, this widely accepted thing, this explanation that
Jerry is not actually in the bad room, she's downstairs
playing with friends. Would be the Jerry bathroom break theory,
that's right. And then if it turns out that you
(20:09):
find that Jerry spending an hour a day pretending to
be in the bathroom but actually being downstairs playing words
with friends, if the universe couldn't exist without her doing
that every day, you would have a scientific law. That's right. Yeah,
I think that was a good example you came up
(20:30):
with as a great example. As it turns out. Uh,
I guess the point here is when you hear someone
say in an argument, well, that's just a theory, just
punch him in the head and then tell them what
we just said about the bathroom breaks and they'll say,
who's Jerry? Or just just queue up that whole bit
and stand outside of their window wearing a trench coat
(20:52):
and holding a boom box over your head with the
smug look on your face. Uh all right, So should
we go back in the old way back machine a
little bit and just talk a little bit about how
the scientific method came to be? Yes, man, this this thing,
(21:15):
what are you running this on these days? Straight? Kerosene?
The fumes in here killing me. Sorry about that? Trying
to go green? You know, kerosene is not green diesel.
Maybe I'm choking bio diesel. How about that? Okay, the
way Back machine will run French freed grease. That would
be fine. I'll get to work on that. I could
(21:37):
handle this. So you you tease us with the Renaissance,
and the reason the Renaissance was so awesome and necessary
it was because of something else we talked about, which
was the Dark Ages, Uh when, which you remember, that's
the rationalists disparaging term for this era. That's right, but
I think sort of rightfully so because right before the
(22:00):
Dark Ages until about a century after, there was not
much advancement at all in the realm of scientific advancement.
Uh No, it's it's true. That's hard to argue with that,
and and the reason why is again, science wasn't really
born yet, and there is a huge struggle between rationalism
and mysticism, and ultimately we're living in the age of
(22:21):
rationalism now. Yeah, and we should point out too that
this was mainly in Europe over the Islamic world. As
I think we had a listener mail point out, there
are a lot of advancements being made uh just sort
of flying under the European radar at the time, because
some say the Catholic Church kind of kept science under
its thumb for a while, and it's a pretty big threat.
(22:45):
He said, you know, you can't do this stuff, you
can't experiment like this, and don't ask these questions because
here are your answers. But eventually the Renaissance came about
in the twelfth century and people woke up and I
saw some of the work in the Islamic world and said,
you know what, maybe let's start reading up on Aristotle
and told me and euclid it once again. Yeah, they're like,
(23:06):
we forgot about these guys. I mean, it literally kind
of vanished for a while. It did from the West. Yes,
fortunately it was still around, you know, and in its
home places. But yes, in the West they were lost.
The Roman stuff was almost entirely lost because it was
being suppressed by the locals, and I think the Greek
knowledge was completely banished. Yes, somehow somehow they got there
(23:28):
was some um. We got another listener mail after the Enlightenment.
One they said that it was an Islamic scholar who
was the one who translated Aristotle into Latin. Or something
like that, and that without this guy, like the West
wouldn't have had much to start with, because that's where
that birth of rationalism came from from, was this rediscovery
(23:50):
of Greek and Roman classical thought, and this was the
basis of scientific inquiry of rationalism, of saying, like, okay,
there's there's set rules to things, and we need to
discover these rules and how the principles of how the
universe works, like there has to be principles, and we
need to find this in a rational, methodical way. And
right out of the gate Europe said, oh, okay, well
(24:13):
whatever you say is right then, Aristotle. We're used to
just believing everything without questioning it. And luckily Albert Magnus,
I think is who it was. Um Albertus was Albertus Magnus.
Roger Bacon, who said, no, it is Bacon, Roger Bacon,
who just has this great name, Roger Bacon, the Bacon brothers. Yeah,
he's they weren't brothers though, but they were they related
(24:36):
at all? You know. I looked that up and I
don't think people know either way. I don't think there's
any proof, but a lot of people think because of
their names and the way things went back then, that
they may very well have been. And I mean they
were separated by three or so years. Although Roger was
a was a monk, so he would not have had children.
So if they were, it's an excellent point. It wasn't
(24:59):
necessarily through line, you know. Yeah, it could have been
a nephew or something, or his brother Kevin might have
had the line that matched. So Roger was the one
who said, everybody stopped. Just because Aristotle wrote something doesn't
mean it's fact, especially when we find contradictions to it.
It doesn't oursells not automatically, right, And this is a
(25:21):
huge advancement. Yeah, And Albertus Magnus was the one, I
believe who said, you know, this thing called revealed truth,
which is basically God says this instead of a truth
found by experimenting, is maybe we should experiment instead and
not take this revealed truth as the truth. Right. And
(25:42):
we mentioned in that Enlightenment episode as well about scholasticism
about using scientific inquiry to explain theology, which was, you know,
you're still working from a theological standpoint, right, but you're
starting to use scientific inquiry and the the idea that
you shouldn't just accept things as truth. That was again
(26:03):
a huge, huge breakthrough. Yeah. Uh. Francis Bacon, the other
Bacon brother, he's one of the heroes of this story. Yeah.
He was an attorney and philosopher and possibly Shakespeare. Oh really,
I never heard that? Interesting, So what do you mean
like wrote those under the pseudonym? Huh? And there the
(26:25):
Shakespeare sister was the other theory too, right, it was
a woman. I've heard that, and she couldn't like, you know,
women couldn't be the play right, so was her dumb
brother William? That's good? Was it a brother? I think
that was one of the theories. This is a good
Smith song too. Uh, Shakespeare sister was that the name
of it? Wouldn't it a band to you? I think
(26:48):
it was? What was it? Maybe? Uh? So anyway, he
was a philosopher and a lawyer, and he said, you
know what, the Baconian method basically became the scientific method.
He was the first dude who really said, this is
how the steps that you should take to uh investigate science.
(27:10):
There has to be a framework. And the whole point
of this that we take this so for granted now
because it's so intuitively and on its face right as
far as science inquiry, he goes, but this is an
enormous breakthrough to say, follow this step, these steps, this framework,
(27:30):
and if everybody who carries out science follows the same framework,
then science will be universal and interchangeable and anyone in
the world, and not just now, but anytime, we'll be
able to carry out the same experiment and we'll be
able to verify or disprove it. And that is amazing
(27:52):
that that happened. That's why Francis Bacon is one of
the heroes of the story. And he didn't come up
with this entirely on his own, but he was the
one who said, this is what we're gonna do. I'm
gonna give it a name. I'm going to spell it out,
and from now on you can call me the dad
of the scientific method. Yeah, and that's why Newton was
such a rock star, because he so rigorously stuck to
(28:14):
the scientific method that all these centuries later, his uh,
you know, his systems of laws are they have stood
the test of time. And uh, I think it's a
good point to bring up to that the collaboration of
scientists is really the hallmark of advancement and moving forward.
(28:35):
It's not working in a vacuum. It's sharing your ideas
and working with one another and the whole uh little
sidebar here on celth here I thought was pretty cool,
which was when science quit. We're not quit, but started
looking at small things instead of looking at the universe
around them and at the stars. And uh said basically,
(28:56):
you know, through the advancement of lens grinding, Antonio van
Levin Hook specifically Dutch tradesman was pretty good at making
simple microscopes, and all of a sudden, contemporaries like Robert
Hook said, you know what, let's start looking at tiny
things because they're in might lie the answer too many
many things. Yeah, and they're right. Robert Hook found cork
(29:19):
or he discovered cells by looking at cork through an
early microscope. So in this story, science is hastened by
technological advancement lens grinding to make microscopes, and then this
new technology is used to further science. Right. Yeah, it's
like mutual inspiration between Levin Hook and Hook n Hook.
(29:41):
It was neat because Hook heard about Leavin Hooks microscopes,
got his hands on one or a microscope, looked at
him like cork and said, oh, there's such a thing
as cells. Levin Hook said, oh, that's pretty neat. Let
me try, and he said, oh, there's such a thing
as quote little animal, which we call protozoan bacteria. And
(30:03):
one of the Royal Societies. After Leavin Hook presented his findings,
turned back to Hook and said, hey, Hook, we know
you're pretty handy with the microscope. You confirmed Leavin Hook's
findings are their little animals? Hook said, there are. Indeed,
I can see them with my microscope. That's right. And
that inspired a German botanist name Matthias Schleiden ah to
(30:26):
look at a lot of plants and he was the
first guy to say, you know what, plants are composed
of cells. And he's having dinner one night with his
zoologist buddy. Yeah, and this is about a hundred years later. Yeah,
Theodore schran and said, you know what, dude, Uh, order
the wine and order the steak. Trust me, because this
place is fantastic. And uh, also, plants are made of cells.
(30:51):
Don't tell anyone. And he went, you know what, dude,
I have been investigating animals with microscopes and they're made
of cells too. And so they figured out at this dinner, Yeah,
that everything is made of cells. All living things are
made of cells. Boom. Okay, so this is huge. This
is a big advancement, right that we're hitting upon right now.
But it laid the further foundation, right, So initial scientific
(31:14):
inquiry led to further scientific inquiry and further scientific conclusions
and generalizations. All living things are made of cells, and
then it was extrapolated elsewhere. Right. Yeah, Like twenty years later,
Rudolph Virtual said, you know what, not only is everything
made of living cells, but they all come from pre
(31:35):
existing cells, which was a huge deal at the time
because people believed in spontaneous generation at the time, Like
if you left some um wheat seed and a sweaty shirt,
it would spawn mice. I think it was one of them.
There's a lot of weird ones pressed basil between some
bricks and you'll get a scorpion. Was one, like they
(31:57):
were really out there. Yeah, well the one that is
well not true, but the one that you could actually
see was rotten meat would eventually, uh spawn maggots. How
did they possibly get there? Yeah, spontaneous generation. But that's
the obvious explanation. And if you think about it, they're
working from Okam's razor and ocams. Razor says, the simplest
explanation is usually the right one, all all other things given. Well,
(32:21):
the thing is is spontaneous generation has never been shown
to be possible. If we get the sell thing over here,
let's investigate that. So this uh what was the guy's name? Virtual? Yes,
he's saying, okay, well, wait a minute, I get this
cell theory I'm working on that's been around for a
couple of decades. Hypothesis probably the cell hypothesis at the
(32:43):
nice catch. Don't feel bad though, because this article that
you sent said that scientists today like still like confuse
those terms just and there. The House of Works article
makes a good point in saying that science and everything
that has to do with it is in the scientific
method is very luid and open new interpretation and experimentation. Obviously,
(33:05):
but so he says, um, okay, this cell hypothesis, this
is a pretty good explanation for what we now call
spontaneous generation. He didn't do anything about it, He just
put it out there. Yeah, and then along comes Louis Pastier,
who does do something about it. He figures out a
great experiment to try to disprove spontaneous generation. Yeah, it's
(33:28):
pretty simple too. Um. He basically took a broth uh,
put equal amounts in two different beakers. One had a
straight neck and one had an S shaped neck. He
boiled it just to make sure everything and it was killed,
and then just let it sit there in the same conditions,
open to the to the world and are open to
(33:48):
the room like. It wasn't corked in other words, nor
he noticed that the one with the straight neck eventually
became cloudy and discolored, uh, meaning there was some junk
growing in there, and one in the S shaped neck
did not do anything. It remained the same. So think
what well, he thought that germs, that there were such
(34:09):
things as germs which leaving hoke and hook had already
shown um, And that if that in the S shaped
flask they had gotten trapped in the neck, in this
the open neck, they had been able to just enter
unobstructed and had generated there. The reason that the S
shape flask was still sterile was because there is no
(34:31):
such thing as spontaneous generation. If there were, then no
S shaped neck would impede anything like that, and boom,
there you have it. So he disproved that spontaneous generation
is a thing right through the scientific method. Exactly. Here's
the leap that a lot of people make, scientists included,
(34:53):
that really is a great disservice to science. He didn't
prove cell theory, right. What he did is take that
cell hypothesis and present some really persuasive evidence that it's
probably right. Yeah. But like this article you sent points out,
disproving something is just as important as proving something. So
(35:15):
here's the thing that's the most you can hope for
a science is disproving sure with science, unless you're talking
about math. With science, there's no such thing as proof.
A theory, even a law, universal law still has the
potential for being undermined by one single experiment, one single observation,
and therefore there is no real ultimate proof in science.
(35:37):
There's just theories and support for theories, and then ultimately
laws aim further and further support for laws, right, but
they're not proven. What science does ultimately is disproved things
or lend support for existing theories, are existing interpretations of
why things happen the way they do. And that's what
(36:00):
Pasture did. So if you look at the experiment, he
disproved spontaneous generation, but he lent support to the cell theory,
and probably with his experiment it went from the cell
hypothesis to the cell theory because it was just so persuasive.
And that's what a theory is. It means that a
lot of people out there who are reasonable say this
(36:21):
explanation is probably the right one. Yeah, it's predictive. If
you do it over and over, you're probably going to
get the same result. But that's not to say that
Pastures showed that if you do this a million in
one times that the S shaped flask won't turn cloudy.
He didn't prove that. You can't prove that, which is
again science can disprove and lent support can't prove a
(36:45):
very good point. So right after this message break, we're
going to get into the actual steps of the scientific method. Alright, dude,
I guess that long last we're there. Like you mentioned before,
(37:08):
the scientific method is fluid, and it's not like when
you get your science degree they hand you a little
laminated card like the Miranda rights that cop scary that
you know, list out all the different steps you have
to take. Um, But generally maybe I would we should
carry those around, all right, we should make little wallet
(37:29):
cards of the scientific method just to carry stuff you
should know about. Go on it. Oh yeah, I'll make
a million buttons random and sell them. Uh. Generally speaking, though,
it follows these steps. The first thing you do, like
we mentioned earlier, is you observe something. You ask a question.
Uh next, Like Darwin was known, I think when we
(37:49):
did our podcast on him too, he would spend like
a week on three square feet of ground. It was
like even longer than that. Remember, remember, wasn't it he
said that he did. He wasn't gonna MOA's lawn for
like three years because he wanted to see what what happened? Yeah,
so he's the ultimate and qualitative data of just observing,
writing things down and asking questions. And the reason you
(38:12):
ask your question is so you can narrow something down
like that. I think the example they use in here
is on Galapa ghosts, like the beaks of what bird?
Was it? Yeah? The finch bird. He noticed a bunch
of different beaks, so he finally posted a question like, um,
you know, I think these beaks are different for a
very specific reason, and I to find out why. Yes,
(38:34):
he said, what caused the diversification of finches on Gallopagus?
Who you should have done that with an accent. Well, yeah,
he would have had a British accent. Huh yeah, unless
he was pretending to be someone else. I think of
him as like, um, sounding like Hemingway or something. Oh yeah,
just drunken, violent kind of. But he wasn't. He was
(38:55):
like the opposite of that. Yeah. Well I saw that
the movie. Saw a picture his voice as the dude
that played him, who I can't remember right now, ed Norton. No,
I finally saw a birdman. Tho did you see that? Yeah?
Great movie? Um, I disagree you didn't like it? What? Wow?
(39:19):
That surprises me. Um, we'll get into that off year.
So uh sorry, you just threw me with that. And
he's on galapagost and he's like, what the heck with
all these different finches one small island? Why would there
be different species of finch so and why are they
(39:39):
all seeming to survive and coexist so? Well, what's what
makes Yeah? Then he leads to the question, what's making
all of these species of finches so diverse? Right? Or?
Bill Harris uses a pretty good example. That's something everyone
can understand, Like what car body shape is the best
for air resistance? Like one the shape like a box,
(40:01):
or one the shape like aerodynamic, like a bird, and
he carries that out. In the next step, you formulate
your hypothesis based on your you know, for knowledge and
maybe observations, like so, you know what, I think that
a car shaped like a bird is probably more aerodynamic
than one shape like a box. Yeah, if you're thinking,
if you're the type of person who's sitting around asking
(40:23):
questions about aerodynamics, you probably already have some sort of
sense that a box is less aerodynamic than a bird.
Boxes rarely fly unless they're carried by one of those
delightful Amazon delivery drones. They don't have those yet, right,
They're not gonna do that, are they. There's like a
pizza delivery drone service. Man, I think where you have
(40:47):
PiZZ are grilled cheese in New York and you go
stand on an XF you order and it like comes
and drops it. That is the dumbest thing of it.
And I can't wait to do it where they're making
a lot of money. Let's pretty funny. Um, Yet we
can't get food to the homeless somehow exactly, we can
drop a grilled cheese on someone's head. They're like you
homeless guy, get off that X exactly. Um, alright, So
(41:11):
your hypothesis, I don't think we ever mentioned, is typically
represented as an if then statement. Yeah, if you're doing
good sciences, Yeah, like if the cars profile. Uh, well,
the the example he uses if the body's profile related
to the amount of air it produces, which is the
more general statement. Yeah, that's like based on a theory. Yeah,
(41:34):
and it's gonna get more specific than the car designed
like the body of a bird will be more aerodynamic
than one like a box. So that's inductive reasoning, starting
with a broad statement and going to something narrow, and
it's if then at the same time. Yeah, and now
you have a test. You have a question that can
be answered, you can figure out a way to answer it. Yeah,
And he points out to this is pretty important that, uh,
(41:57):
your hypothesis, if it's formulated correctly, means it is testable
and it's falsifiable, which are often one and the same,
you know. Yeah, And that's again we go to the
people who say that they're they're soft sciences aren't real science.
There's pseudoscience because a lot of the data that they
come up with, a lot of the hypotheses they come
(42:19):
up with aren't falsifiable, they're not testable. It's a it's
a thing, it's an issue, it's a thing. So next
up in the steps, you're gonna experiment. And when you experiment,
you can't just go in there willy nilly and do
whatever you want. Um, you have to set up specific
conditions and they must be controlled, and you want to
(42:41):
everything that's supposed to be identical needs to be identical.
So basically, you have two variables. At least, you have
an independent variable and you have a dependent variable. And
if you're talking about car shape, that is the independent
variable in this study, that's the one that's manipulated exactly,
it's the one you're controlling. The independent variable is the
(43:03):
one you, the researcher, is controlling. So in this case,
you're controlling the shape of the car. You have yourself
a bird shaped car and you have yourself a box
shaped car. So the shape of the car changed because
you made it change. Now, when you blast a bunch
of air over it during your experiment, what you're measuring
is the dependent variable. So you're measuring what happens based
(43:27):
on the change that you made. That's right, and you
want to you, you want to study one single variable
at a time, basically, yeah, don't get fancy, just just
do good science, step by step methodical. You also have
to have your control group in any experiment, uh, and
an experimental group and the controlled group is what's gonna
allow you to compare the test results to that baseline measurement. Yeah,
(43:52):
and you need that baseline measurement, so it's not just
like chance. Basically exactly like if Pastor had just done
the S shaped now can nothing happen? He wouldn't have
necessarily been able to say that he was right, even
though he was right, he needed that control, which was
the open flask, right. Or with the cars, you need
two cars, like you said, one bird shaped and one
(44:14):
box shaped, right, Or then maybe in this case, since
the bird shape and the box shape both show up
in the hypothsis, you need a third like egg shaped
one or something like that. I bet that would be
pretty streamline. Yeah. Yeah. But the key though, is all
of those variables have to be um. All the other
variables have to be the same, like you have to
(44:34):
have them. They have to be the same weight, they
have to be painted the same, the tires, everything, the windows,
one can't have an antenna on the other not They've
all they've got to be identical other than the one variable, right,
the independent variable that you're that's the one you want different.
Everything else you want the same, or else it's possible that, oh,
well this one had bigger tires, so that actually made
(44:56):
it more aerodynamic. Yeah, and you're just doing yourself a
favor by doing all that stuff. You know, you want
to rule out everything else but that one variable. After that,
you want to analyze your data so you can draw
your conclusion. And sometimes it's kind of straightforward and easy.
Sometimes takes a lot of work and a lot of
(45:18):
various tools. Let's say you're just blasting a car and
a wind tunnel. You're measuring the wind resistance using certain
awesome instruments and that kind of stuff, and you're taking
that data, and then afterwards you're gonna analyze. You're gonna
compare the data that you gathered from the bird shaped
car the box shaped car, and then the control the
(45:40):
egg shaped car. You're gonna compare them and you're gonna say, well,
the wind resistance was less for the bird shaped car
then the box shaped car, which means that my hypothesis
was correct, and here all the data points, whereas Louis
paste or could just say look at the beakers exactly.
Don't be an idiot it I'm a scientist. That one's
(46:02):
got gross stuff. You can see it, right. But the
other thing about science to chuck ideally is let's say
that egg shaped one turned out the control group turned
out to have better wind resistance than anything. Well, just
by virtue of carrying out this experiment correctly, you would
have stumbled upon an even better aerodynamic design, and you
(46:24):
would have come up with that little egg shaped Mercedes
suv that was so huge, like ten years ago, the
Mercedes egg coming to a store near you. So um.
That's a big, big part of the scientific method is
carrying out a a an experiment, controlling the variables, analyzing
(46:46):
the data. And then there's a step that he missed
that is very rarely part of a scientific method list
that is to share your data. And this is a
huge problem with science right now. The article you said
it was really eye opening. Uh, scientific research has changed
the world. Now it needs to change itself. It's an
economist article. It's up on the internet. Yeah, it was
(47:08):
kind of scary that it's I mean, here's some of
the data he points out is one rule of thumb
among biotech venture capitalists is about half published research can't
even be replicated. And on the biotech firm and Jin
found that they could reproduce only six of their fifty
three landmark studies in cancer research. So you can't repeat
(47:32):
these things. It's like everyone's fighting for dollars in fame,
and maybe not fame, but to some of our career
advancements such that they're kind of not doing that final
step any longer. No, and it's not necessarily just them,
it's the other scientists aren't going back and saying, well,
let me see if your results are reproducible. People are
(47:54):
just taking it on faith. We need another Roger Bacon
to come along and be like, dude, we can't as
blindly accept that one person carried out this one study
and then just go do clinical trials on it without
anybody reproducing it to see if the results can be
verified independently. Yeah. Because uh, and this is a good
time to mention bias. There is such a thing as bias,
(48:16):
and it still happens. Um. A scientist is usually out
to prove something or disprove something that they want a
specific result. Like, even if you're super open minded, you're
probably hoping to disprove or prove something one way or
the other, and your confirmation bias might you know, even
(48:38):
if you don't think you're doing it, you might nudge
out some results that don't support your hypothesis, and so
you won't make it into that awesome journal um which
this author points out that journals need to start uh
putting in what he calls uninteresting results and experiments right
(48:59):
or like this if it's not sexy, right, or studies
that failed to show that their hypothesis was correct. Stuff
is disproved. Those things still need to well not even disproved. Well, yeah,
I guess it is disproved, but yes, like the guy
set out to say, like the red balloon uses less
helium than a silver balloon, and it turns out that
(49:20):
now they use the same amount of helium. Well, if
that study gets published and put out there into the
scientific literature on helium and balloons, then it's going to
prevent some other scientists down the road from wasting time, money,
and helium, which, as you'll remember, is an increasingly needed commodity. UM.
By carrying out the same experiment, whether whether the results
(49:43):
are positive or negative, or what the study is meant
to be shared. And that's the point of the scientific method,
is to to reduce bias. And if you follow it
all the way through ideally and do all of the steps,
including share your research whether it's happy or sad, then
science benefits. The world benefits, and by not doing that,
the world does not benefit. Yeah. He points out that
(50:06):
these days only four percent of published papers are quote
unquote negative results, and it used to be like or
more um And he says, because it's a lot of
it has to do with this sort of you know,
getting in these journals and you're the rockstar scientists and
this study is super sexy. Like if they kind of
(50:28):
quit going that route and made it what it should be,
then research dollars would be better spent and people could
you know, he said, the peer reviewed thing isn't even
all extract up to know that. He mentioned to study
from a medical journal that gave a bunch of peer
reviewers some stuff with deliberate errors inserted into the research,
(50:49):
into the studies, and even when they were told that
they were being tested to find this, they still missed
a lot of it. Yeah, so, yeah, the science used
to kind of re evaluate the way it's carrying out
sciences not science. The problem isn't science itself. The problem
isn't the scientific method. It's the way that it's being
used or not followed through. And a lot of it
has to do with academia and the people funding science. Yeah,
(51:11):
and he said, you know, these days there's a seven
million researchers, and back in the day, even in like
the nineteen fifties, there were like a few thousand maybe, right,
So there's just a lot of career competition, he calls
it careerism. And so you fake a result or two,
or you just nudge out some results that don't support
your hypothesis. You want the bigger paycheck or the fame
(51:34):
or notoriety, and all of a sudden, science is not science. Yeah,
you know, it's pseudoscience exactly. And speaking of pseudoscience, I
think we've reached the point where, um, we should talk
about the limitations of the scientific method, because it does
have its limits, right, Like the way that the scientific
method is set up, especially if you go through, um,
(51:57):
if you include falsification, which most science is now, say
is a thing like falsifiability of your hypothesis means that
you have a real scientific hypothesis there if it can
be disproven by some observation or some measurement or whatever,
then it's falsifiable. And if it's not falsifiable, then it's
not really science. So the thing is for something to
(52:21):
be falsifiable. And it was actually a philosopher that came
up with the concept of falsification, a guy named Carl
Popper in the ninet thirties, and he was the one
that said, like, you're you have to be able to
falsify something for it to be disproven or supported, and
if not, then it's pseudoscience. Well, part and parcel of
that is that what you're saying has to be able
(52:42):
to be detected empirically. There's some way that it has
to the presence of it has to be measured or inferred.
And so a lot of people say, well, then with
the scientific method it reaches it's the limits of its
current usefulness when it tries to explain the supernatural role.
When somebody says, like, are real exactly you can't prove that, well,
(53:06):
you also can't disprove it either, right, and So if
you are a scientist who says, uh, because the scientific
method can't prove or disprove the existence of ghosts or God,
there is no such thing as ghosts or God, you're
making a leap of faith just as much as the
(53:27):
same person who says science can't prove or disprove the
existence of ghosts or God, therefore God's and ghosts are real.
They're both leaps of faith. And that really the most
scientific approach to the existence of the supernatural, whether it
is a ghost or God, is that we simply don't know,
and that we cannot know scientifically. And but that doesn't
(53:48):
mean that it does exist or doesn't exist. And that's
saying that science shows that it does or doesn't exist,
is by by definition, the opposite of what science shows.
Science shows neither. It's not capable of showing or showing
that something doesn't exist. That's a good point. Uh. The
other place where science can get corrupted is when it
(54:10):
blurs the lines, or when people blur the lines between uh,
moral judgments and science value judgments. Like you can study
global warming, you can study cause and effect, you can
report data, But when you make that secondly to say,
and this is a scientist. I mean, someone can come
along and say global warming is bad, shouldn't drive your suv.
(54:32):
That's fine, But a scientist can't do a study and
say that because that's uh, that's a value judgment. And
that's where science can get corrupted pretty much. Right. You can.
You can study global warming and results until the cows
come home, but you can't assert that if you use
this lightbulb, you're a bad person, right, or um ocean
(54:54):
and acidification is bad. It's not good for humans, but
if you're a jelly fits it's awesome, you know. So, yes,
and again you made a great point. It's not science,
it's people using science to make value judgments. So ultimately,
the scientific method, although it does have its limitations in
that it needs empirical data, uh to prove or disprove something,
(55:19):
it's not that it's not flawed. That's not a flaw.
That's a limitation, and it's it's when it's misused then
it its results become flawed or skewed, and that's the
people doming it. Man, not science, that's right. It's pretty
interesting stuff. Yeah, man, this is a good one. I
thought so too. Man. Let us start out with a
bang boom all downhill from here. If you want to
(55:43):
know more about scientific method, check out that article on
the economists, check out explorables uh, and then of course
check out the scientific method in the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said that
it's time for listener mail, that's right, but quickly before
listener mail. Uh. We get asked by listeners all the time,
(56:06):
what can we do? Since you have a free podcast,
we can't pay for it. What can we do to
help you? Guys? And one thing you can do that
we would appreciate is, uh, go to iTunes and leave
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(56:26):
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We're not saying go leave us some great review, but
go leave us a great review. You said it, uh,
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(56:48):
We would appreciate that. To turn somebody onto the show
and um, that's it. That's our version of a pledge drive. Wow,
we do what once every three years. Not not very
obnoxious and it last alright. So on the listener mail,
this is from my sister in law. Actually, oh yeah,
there's some nepotism. Yeah, Jenny, Jenny Bryant, she mentioned in
(57:11):
the home school episode homeschooled her kids for a little while,
and she sort of corrected me. Uh, love the homeschooling episode, guys.
One very big trend these days in the home schooling
community is what Abbey, my niece does, which is hybrid homeschooling.
So two to three days a week she is at
school and then the rest of the time she does
(57:32):
a plant. She's not a plant. Uh, the rest of
time she's at home. So she says it's a great
option with curriculum provided and new topics sought at school
and then worked out at home. Many of these schools
are accredited making getting into college, including Ivy League schools,
Hassle Free and Abbey School has sports teams homecoming. Abbey
(57:53):
is actually an excellent volleyball player. Beta club newspaper staff
all the good stuff. The flexibility is great, for families,
and we are huge fans of how the hybrid approach
prepared students for college by allowing them time outside of
class to manage their work and life schedules. So that's
from Jenny Nice actually via text. The first listener mail
(58:15):
via text. How did you print that out? Did you
retype it and print it? No? Dude, are you serious?
You can print from texts? No, you just copy pasted
to an evening. Oh yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Men, then,
how in the world did you did you do that?
With your thoughts? I have a niece who is excellent
at volleyball too. Yeah, how would we should get them together?
(58:38):
He's I don't know, it's time of eleven, okay, something
like that. Abby just turned thirteen, so there. Oh, maybe
they face off against Yeah? Is she in Atlanta? Yes,
she's something Canton. You never know where's Evie. She's in Roswell.
But they I think with volleyball they kind of have
played all over the state. Bizarre if they played each other. Yeah,
we'll just see each other at a match one day,
(58:59):
on opposite sides of the court with our arms folded. Yeah,
what else? I got nothing else? Well, like Chuck said,
go leave us a review, and if you want to
get in touch with us, you can tweet to us
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on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can email us. Can we still do that? Ye? You
(59:21):
can't text me at uh stuff podcast at how stuff
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home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Stuffy. Should know
why grinning. It's been a while, man. Know it's funny,
(00:20):
like those words come pouring out of my mouth and
then it's cool. You wake up in the middle of
night saying that, and you mean like slugs you in
the face. She's sleep She has to dry my brow. Yes,
we prerecorded some for December, as we like to do
to take a little time off at the end of
the year and not explain things for a few weeks
(00:40):
in our real lives. Like people ask me things like
what happened to that stick of butter? Yeah, I don't know,
don't ask don't even ask me. I could tell you,
but I'm not gonna exactly. That's how it goes in
my house. Find your own butter. December was find your
own butter money. That's a good that's that's a good one.
That should be a T shirt. Stuff you should know
(01:02):
find your own butter or December is find your own butter.
M Yeah, that's right. Maybe a stick of butter and
some Garland on it. Yeah, I like that. So it's
good to see you again. Man's gonna be back in here. Yeah,
it is nice to be back. As much as the
break was great, I'm happy to be explaining things again.
Well that's good because if we got in here and
you're like, I can't do this, I can't do it again,
we'd be in trouble. Yeah. So I'm glad we're all
(01:24):
feeling good. Jerry, you're feeling good. Jerry's got two thumbs
up in a big goofy smile, two of her three thumbs.
She looks like Bob from that male enhancement pill ad.
Oh see the guy, the old man that's like super Buff,
I would call him old. He was middle aged. He
looked like kind of a Bob Dobbs type dude. I
think that's kind of who he was modeled. You see
(01:46):
the guy that's super muscling. Now I'm thinking of someone different.
I think, are you thinking of Jack lo Lane? No? No, no, no,
just there's some ad. There's some old man that looks
like really creepy because from the next super Buff looks
like it's twenty five year old. No, remember that was
like a male enhancement pill and I'm making air quotes
here for erectile this unsion. Well, there go the air quotes.
(02:06):
But yes, And it was like in the early two thousands.
I think maybe late nineties, but I think early two thousands,
and these ads were everywhere, and there was Bob and
like all these great things happened to him because he
started taking this pill. I can't remember the name of
the pill. But the company like got into a lot
of trouble because it was basically like a subscription service
(02:28):
and like you gave him your credit card and you
got this free trial, but then they started sending it
to you and it was like next to impossible to
cut off service. Interesting, They're like, no, we want your
mailness to be enhanced. So you you've seen these ads.
I was gonna start asking questions, but why bother? I
will I will YouTube. I will find it on YouTube.
(02:49):
I'll be like, oh, Bob, yeah you will. You'll go, Oh,
I want to come back in and record an insert
the guy that's on the back of all these pill
bottles in my bathroom. Oh, chuck, I don't even remember
how we got Oh yeah, Jerry did that. That was
Jerry's fault. But um, you remember we did the Enlightenment episode. Okay,
(03:10):
we talked a lot about how there's this kind of
um tug of war over the human psyche between rationalism
and mysticism. I guess you could you could put it well,
I feel like we're talking today about the scientific method.
Great idea, by the way, Thank you very much. It's
(03:30):
been a long time coming. Um, because I realized, like
I don't understand it as fully as I don't understand science.
I understand the scientific method because it's pretty cut and
dry and it's beautiful and elegant and simple. But then
you just take this thing and it came out of
the birth of rationalism, and when you place it into
the world and make it function, there's a lot of implications.
(03:54):
Is it being used properly? Is it being used responsibly?
Like are we putting what constitutes f E than to that?
You know, like it just raises all this other stuff.
And it made me realize, like I don't understand science
as much as I want to, So researching this it
was awesome. Yeah, and this is a cool episode, I
think because not only are we going to talk about
the scientific method, but we're going to talk about just science,
(04:16):
like what is science in general? And some of the
rock stars along the way, who really you know, laid
out the path remarkably in like many many years ago,
like coming up with these amazing discoveries that still like
hold you know, you can like hold their feet to
the fire for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, because
if you come upon a universal truth, you know it
(04:41):
is what it is, like you got to be the
person who discovered it because you know, you saw it,
you realized it a certain way, but ultimately it was
there already. Yeah, like Newton, I mean, we'll talk about
all this stuff, but it's not like now we're like,
oh Newton, most of what he said was wrong, But
that's understandable because it was a long time ago. Like
his stuff holds up really well. I was wondering if
(05:01):
he on his deathbed was just like, oh, man, I
contributed so much to humanity it's mind boggling, but I
couldn't enhance my malehood. Well, Bob hadn't come along yet,
So Chuck, let's let's just quit stalling and talk about science,
like what is science? Well, I hate the old elementary
school uh defined as, but it's a pretty good place
(05:24):
to start here to get a base definition of science. Yeah,
Old William Harris did a great job with this. Yes,
William Harris did a great job. Uh. Science the intellectual
and practical activity encompassing the structure and behavior of the
physical and natural world through observation and experimentation. Uh So
the first part of that is science is practical and
(05:47):
it is you know, they make a good he makes.
Bill Harris makes a great point in here. It's not
just stuff you do in a lab, and it's not
just for scientists. It is all about being hands on
and active, and it's about discovery and asking questions about
I mean, that's how everything is ultimately solved, is by
someone looking at something and having a question about it exactly.
(06:09):
And then the scientific method comes in when you say,
and this is how you properly get to that answer exactly. Um.
And he makes another good point to that. The idea
that there's a method, a scientific method, makes it seem
like it's it's secreted away among the the fraternity of scientists.
(06:29):
And like you said, any anybody can use it. It's
just kind of part of being a curious human is
it's not even anyone can use it everyone does use it,
you just might not even know that you're using it,
like if you I mean one of the examples that
use later is if like your car overheats, when you
figure out why and fix it, that's the scientific method, right,
playing out exactly based on reasoning. Yeah, okay, and deduction
(06:53):
and induction. Man, there's so much to talk about. Okay,
So let's let's talk about that definition that you had.
So the first part is that science is it's a
practical activity. So science is practical, right, It's it's this, Um.
The basis of the whole thing is discovery. Right, you
see something, You see birds in flight, and you say,
(07:16):
where are those birds going? And if you just went
and laid down on the ground and went to sleep
after that, then you're not you're not carrying out science.
But if you went, I want to find out where
those birds are going, and you follow them and you
start taking notes, that's that is the basis of science
is discovery. Yeah, and that's the observational part as well. Um,
(07:36):
sometimes you're using a microscope or a telescope, sometimes you're
using your eyeballs. But no matter what your tool is, uh,
you're gonna be watching something and recording. What's called data
or data depending on I don't know what kind of
person you are. What do you say I think? I
say both. I think data. Yeah, I don't think I've
(08:00):
don't think. I say data data, I say data data. Yeah,
all right, we'll go with data. You say both. I
feel like it just comes out of my mouth one
way or the other, and I don't really think about it.
I think that's like being ambidextrous. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a
data datas Yeah. Uh so once you are observing this data, well,
there are a couple of kinds. There's quantitative data, which
(08:22):
are numbers, like you know, your body temperature is point six,
although I think that's changed slightly now, didn't it. Yeah? Yeah, there.
You used to be like, if you were a human being,
your body temperature is point six, and they it's like, no,
there's a little more variation than that. But any kind
of just numerical representation is quantitative, whereas qualitative is behavioral,
(08:45):
like I'm gonna watch that bird um eat in poop
for the next week, right, or what happens if I
what will the slug do if I put a bunch
of salt on it? Do you know I don't do that. No,
you really should not do that. No, it's awful. But
the reaction of the slug is gathering qualitative data. And
depending on who you talk to, there isn't qualitative data
(09:08):
and science that it should all just be quantitative because yeah,
because quantitative data is reproducible. Qualitative data is. It's not
necessarily reproducible. You can observe the same phenomenon, but you're
not necessarily controlling it. Okay, well, I guess I get that.
But I agree with Bill here and that they are both.
(09:30):
They go hand in hand, and neither one is more
important than the other. You need to have both. Well,
a lot of people do, and we'll talk more about
it later, because without the idea that qualitative data is
acceptable and scientific, you don't have the social social sciences,
like they don't exist. Yeah, that's a good point, but yes,
we have quantitative data and qualitative data. I agree with you.
(09:51):
They're both useful. Uh. It is an intellectual pursuit um,
So you can make observations on data all day long.
But until you bring reason, in this case inductive reasoning,
which is driving a generalization based on your observations, then
it's just data sitting there on a piece of paper
(10:12):
like it's supposed to lead you somewhere right exactly, And
so we should talk about inductive and deductive reasoning and
it depending. Again, it's really weird, But one of the
things that came across is that there's not a universal
agreement on how science is carried out. Like I saw
some places where there's like there's no place for inductive
reasoning in science. Then other places they're saying, well, you
(10:35):
have to have science using inductive reasoning. Everybody seems to
agree that deductive reasoning is the basis of science, but
that you also have to have inductive So deductive is
basically taking a big, broad generalization and saying that it
applies to something specific more specific. Yes, Uh, inductive is
(10:57):
the opposite where you say, I've noticed these different data points,
and uh, that means that this broad generalization is true.
So you go from specific, small observations to a broad generalization.
And the reason that a lot of people say, well,
inductive reasoning doesn't have any place in science is because
(11:20):
you're saying those birds over there are all brown, Therefore
all birds of that type of brown, even though I
haven't seen every single bird of that type in the world.
I'm saying that all those birds are brown. And a
lot of people say there's no place for that in science. Well,
if you want to go out and prove that, then
that's your business. You know. You can't just say that
(11:40):
and be like and I'm done, right exactly. I guess
you could. But much of scientists, right, but the the
you can use it to formulate hey, hypotheses. Right, so
you can say I've generated all these data points, I'm
gonna put them together and see if this broad generalization
is right. Okay, so there is a place for inductive
seeing science. But everybody says deductive reasoning is the basis
(12:03):
of science. Well, Bill Harris does. Uh. He offers a
great example for inductive reasoning with Edwin Hubble of the
Hubble Telescope. Uh. He was looking through the Hooker telescope,
which at the time at California's Mount Wilson. Is that
the one from Rebel Now that's um Griffith Park Observatory,
(12:27):
which has been redesigned, and uh, it is really cool now, yeah,
I mean it was kind of cool before, but it
was definitely like, uh, sort of the bass music in
the time forgot. Oh really, so they've updated it. I'll
bet that was cool though in its own way. Yeah,
it was neat. I used to live near there, so
it was kind of But that's like the famous one,
at least in the movies. Yeah, that's where they have
(12:48):
the big knife fight. Yeah, and there's this James Dean
statue there too. I didn't like a bust um. So yes.
Edwin Hubble he's at Mountain Wilson and he's looking through
the Hooker telescope, which was the biggest one. And at
the time, everyone said, the Milky Way galaxy is it?
That's what we've got going on. Did you know this? Uh? Yeah,
I knew that because we're talking. Yeah, not that long ago.
(13:11):
Did not realize this. And he started looking through this
telescope and said, you know what, these nebula that everyone
says are part of our galaxy look to me like
they're beyond our galaxy. Not only that, they look like
they're moving away from us. So he made this, uh
with through inductive reasoning, made this observation that you know what,
I think there are many many galaxies out there, and
(13:34):
not only that, I think they are expanding, and uh,
through technological advancement with telescopes over the years, scientists, you know,
it proved to be true. Yeah, pretty cool. So this
is a really good example of him saying, like, I've
made some observations, and now I'm going to say this
broad generalization. Right, So these these galaxies appear to be
(13:56):
moving away from me, not another. So the whole universe
is expanding. Right, that's inductive reasoning. It's a pretty brave thing, uh,
especially back then, because you're really putting your reputation at stake,
you know. So what Hubble was, what Hubble did was
what we've come to see as science. He made some observations,
(14:17):
he came up with a hypothesis, um, and then it
was tested later on. It's not you don't necessarily as
a scientist. You're a part of a larger collective of scientists, right,
And every scientist needs one another. It's why there's journals
and and um conferences and things like that to share information, right,
(14:37):
And the party and the party, and and Hubble came
up with his own observations. And rather than just experimenting, experimenting,
experimenting himself, which I'm sure he continued to do, he
created this basis of work that he probably realized is
going to survive him. Right, And then later on scientists
came down the road and they tested his hypothesis and
(15:00):
they found it was correct, and so his hypothesis became
a theory. It eventually became part of the basis of
the Big Bang theory that the universe started as a
huge explosion and it's expanding still because we're because it
exploded at one point, right, And they did that by
carrying out other tests or experiments exactly. So this is
(15:24):
how science works. Like some guy back in in nineteen
nine makes some observations in California, he proposes this big,
broad generalist generalization, and over the next like ensuing half
a century, more and more scientists all around the world
start testing his hypothesis and find it to be true,
so it becomes a theory. Yeah. Well, well let's finish
(15:47):
up here with science. The last part of the definition
is that it's systematic and it's methodical, and it requires
testing and experiments, and it requires those experiments and tests
uh to be repeated and verified, and it is is
it's a system. It's a way of working things out.
(16:08):
It's a way of working That is the scientific method basically, Yeah,
you have your idea, you pose a question, you theorize
hyper you put a hypothesis out there, and then you
go about trying to either prove it or disprove it. Yeah, exactly.
And then the way that you go about proving or
disproving it, that's the scientific method. Everything else is just
scientific inquiry. The way you go about, the standardized way
(16:32):
of going about scientific inquiry is the scientific method. And
we friend, we'll talk about the scientific method right after this.
(16:52):
All right, you brought up a point. I think we
should go ahead and just get right to my friend.
Let's do hypotheses and theories. One thing to say together, No,
One thing that really chase my hide is, uh, when
you hear poopo ors of whatever scientific theory say, well,
it's just a theory. And you where was this thing
(17:14):
that you found that poo pooed that? Do you remember
what website that was? No? No, although I do want
to give a shout out now that you mentioned it.
Two explorables. It's like an online university basically of free courses,
and uh, there is one on scientific reasoning that is
just amazing. It's like a huge rabbit hole. You go
(17:37):
down and you start clicking on the embedded links and
you end up like understanding all sorts of stuff. So
go check that one out if you like understanding stuff.
So that's one of the things that bug me if
someone says it's just a theory, and this does a
great job of kind of throwing that out the window. Um,
because it's basically mixing up the two definitions of theory. Yeah,
(17:58):
there's like a colloquial definition that people use every day
that it doesn't really have much to do with the
scientific use. Like, I got a theory that Jerry entered
one hour bathroom breaks every day is really playing uh
words with friends in the lobby. I think your theory
is correct. So that's a theory in the colloquial meaning.
(18:21):
As far as science goes, the theory is not just
something you postulate, say if this may or may not
be true. The theory is beyond the hypothesis, and it's
something that is strongly supported in many different ways and
all there's all kinds of evidence to support something that
eventually becomes a theory. Right, So, um, what you your
(18:42):
theory about Jerry's bathroom breaks in the scientific world would
be a hypothesis. In fact, yeah, it would be a
scientific law, but ultimately it would begin as a hypothesis,
a hunch based on intuition, based on the data you've collected, observeyations,
that kind of stuff. Where like, you know, you've seen
(19:03):
that Jerry goes to the bathroom for like an hour
to stretch frequently. When she comes back, she's um finishing
up a game of words with friends. You've heard that
she's been spotted in the lobby during these times. So
your hypothesis is that while she is gone for these
hour long bathroom breaks, she's actually down the lobby playing
(19:24):
words with friends. Right, based on knowledge, observation, and logic. Right,
So let's say that you decided to set up an experiment,
and you experimented, and you went and you found Jerry
playing words with friends five different times, and you told
me about it, and I was like, I'm going to
run that same experiment exactly the way you did, Right,
I would test that same hypothesis. If I found the
(19:47):
same results to be true, then what you would have
come up with, your hypothesis would move to basically a
theory that is, this widely accepted thing, this explanation that
Jerry is not actually in the bad room, she's downstairs
playing with friends. Would be the Jerry bathroom break theory,
that's right. And then if it turns out that you
(20:09):
find that Jerry spending an hour a day pretending to
be in the bathroom but actually being downstairs playing words
with friends, if the universe couldn't exist without her doing
that every day, you would have a scientific law. That's right. Yeah,
I think that was a good example you came up
(20:30):
with as a great example. As it turns out. Uh,
I guess the point here is when you hear someone
say in an argument, well, that's just a theory, just
punch him in the head and then tell them what
we just said about the bathroom breaks and they'll say,
who's Jerry? Or just just queue up that whole bit
and stand outside of their window wearing a trench coat
(20:52):
and holding a boom box over your head with the
smug look on your face. Uh all right, So should
we go back in the old way back machine a
little bit and just talk a little bit about how
the scientific method came to be? Yes, man, this this thing,
(21:15):
what are you running this on these days? Straight? Kerosene?
The fumes in here killing me. Sorry about that? Trying
to go green? You know, kerosene is not green diesel.
Maybe I'm choking bio diesel. How about that? Okay, the
way Back machine will run French freed grease. That would
be fine. I'll get to work on that. I could
(21:37):
handle this. So you you tease us with the Renaissance,
and the reason the Renaissance was so awesome and necessary
it was because of something else we talked about, which
was the Dark Ages, Uh when, which you remember, that's
the rationalists disparaging term for this era. That's right, but
I think sort of rightfully so because right before the
(22:00):
Dark Ages until about a century after, there was not
much advancement at all in the realm of scientific advancement.
Uh No, it's it's true. That's hard to argue with that,
and and the reason why is again, science wasn't really
born yet, and there is a huge struggle between rationalism
and mysticism, and ultimately we're living in the age of
(22:21):
rationalism now. Yeah, and we should point out too that
this was mainly in Europe over the Islamic world. As
I think we had a listener mail point out, there
are a lot of advancements being made uh just sort
of flying under the European radar at the time, because
some say the Catholic Church kind of kept science under
its thumb for a while, and it's a pretty big threat.
(22:45):
He said, you know, you can't do this stuff, you
can't experiment like this, and don't ask these questions because
here are your answers. But eventually the Renaissance came about
in the twelfth century and people woke up and I
saw some of the work in the Islamic world and said,
you know what, maybe let's start reading up on Aristotle
and told me and euclid it once again. Yeah, they're like,
(23:06):
we forgot about these guys. I mean, it literally kind
of vanished for a while. It did from the West. Yes,
fortunately it was still around, you know, and in its
home places. But yes, in the West they were lost.
The Roman stuff was almost entirely lost because it was
being suppressed by the locals, and I think the Greek
knowledge was completely banished. Yes, somehow somehow they got there
(23:28):
was some um. We got another listener mail after the Enlightenment.
One they said that it was an Islamic scholar who
was the one who translated Aristotle into Latin. Or something
like that, and that without this guy, like the West
wouldn't have had much to start with, because that's where
that birth of rationalism came from from, was this rediscovery
(23:50):
of Greek and Roman classical thought, and this was the
basis of scientific inquiry of rationalism, of saying, like, okay,
there's there's set rules to things, and we need to
discover these rules and how the principles of how the
universe works, like there has to be principles, and we
need to find this in a rational, methodical way. And
right out of the gate Europe said, oh, okay, well
(24:13):
whatever you say is right then, Aristotle. We're used to
just believing everything without questioning it. And luckily Albert Magnus,
I think is who it was. Um Albertus was Albertus Magnus.
Roger Bacon, who said, no, it is Bacon, Roger Bacon,
who just has this great name, Roger Bacon, the Bacon brothers. Yeah,
he's they weren't brothers though, but they were they related
(24:36):
at all? You know. I looked that up and I
don't think people know either way. I don't think there's
any proof, but a lot of people think because of
their names and the way things went back then, that
they may very well have been. And I mean they
were separated by three or so years. Although Roger was
a was a monk, so he would not have had children.
So if they were, it's an excellent point. It wasn't
(24:59):
necessarily through line, you know. Yeah, it could have been
a nephew or something, or his brother Kevin might have
had the line that matched. So Roger was the one
who said, everybody stopped. Just because Aristotle wrote something doesn't
mean it's fact, especially when we find contradictions to it.
It doesn't oursells not automatically, right, And this is a
(25:21):
huge advancement. Yeah, And Albertus Magnus was the one, I
believe who said, you know, this thing called revealed truth,
which is basically God says this instead of a truth
found by experimenting, is maybe we should experiment instead and
not take this revealed truth as the truth. Right. And
(25:42):
we mentioned in that Enlightenment episode as well about scholasticism
about using scientific inquiry to explain theology, which was, you know,
you're still working from a theological standpoint, right, but you're
starting to use scientific inquiry and the the idea that
you shouldn't just accept things as truth. That was again
(26:03):
a huge, huge breakthrough. Yeah. Uh. Francis Bacon, the other
Bacon brother, he's one of the heroes of this story. Yeah.
He was an attorney and philosopher and possibly Shakespeare. Oh really,
I never heard that? Interesting, So what do you mean
like wrote those under the pseudonym? Huh? And there the
(26:25):
Shakespeare sister was the other theory too, right, it was
a woman. I've heard that, and she couldn't like, you know,
women couldn't be the play right, so was her dumb
brother William? That's good? Was it a brother? I think
that was one of the theories. This is a good
Smith song too. Uh, Shakespeare sister was that the name
of it? Wouldn't it a band to you? I think
(26:48):
it was? What was it? Maybe? Uh? So anyway, he
was a philosopher and a lawyer, and he said, you
know what, the Baconian method basically became the scientific method.
He was the first dude who really said, this is
how the steps that you should take to uh investigate science.
(27:10):
There has to be a framework. And the whole point
of this that we take this so for granted now
because it's so intuitively and on its face right as
far as science inquiry, he goes, but this is an
enormous breakthrough to say, follow this step, these steps, this framework,
(27:30):
and if everybody who carries out science follows the same framework,
then science will be universal and interchangeable and anyone in
the world, and not just now, but anytime, we'll be
able to carry out the same experiment and we'll be
able to verify or disprove it. And that is amazing
(27:52):
that that happened. That's why Francis Bacon is one of
the heroes of the story. And he didn't come up
with this entirely on his own, but he was the
one who said, this is what we're gonna do. I'm
gonna give it a name. I'm going to spell it out,
and from now on you can call me the dad
of the scientific method. Yeah, and that's why Newton was
such a rock star, because he so rigorously stuck to
(28:14):
the scientific method that all these centuries later, his uh,
you know, his systems of laws are they have stood
the test of time. And uh, I think it's a
good point to bring up to that the collaboration of
scientists is really the hallmark of advancement and moving forward.
(28:35):
It's not working in a vacuum. It's sharing your ideas
and working with one another and the whole uh little
sidebar here on celth here I thought was pretty cool,
which was when science quit. We're not quit, but started
looking at small things instead of looking at the universe
around them and at the stars. And uh said basically,
(28:56):
you know, through the advancement of lens grinding, Antonio van
Levin Hook specifically Dutch tradesman was pretty good at making
simple microscopes, and all of a sudden, contemporaries like Robert
Hook said, you know what, let's start looking at tiny
things because they're in might lie the answer too many
many things. Yeah, and they're right. Robert Hook found cork
(29:19):
or he discovered cells by looking at cork through an
early microscope. So in this story, science is hastened by
technological advancement lens grinding to make microscopes, and then this
new technology is used to further science. Right. Yeah, it's
like mutual inspiration between Levin Hook and Hook n Hook.
(29:41):
It was neat because Hook heard about Leavin Hooks microscopes,
got his hands on one or a microscope, looked at
him like cork and said, oh, there's such a thing
as cells. Levin Hook said, oh, that's pretty neat. Let
me try, and he said, oh, there's such a thing
as quote little animal, which we call protozoan bacteria. And
(30:03):
one of the Royal Societies. After Leavin Hook presented his findings,
turned back to Hook and said, hey, Hook, we know
you're pretty handy with the microscope. You confirmed Leavin Hook's
findings are their little animals? Hook said, there are. Indeed,
I can see them with my microscope. That's right. And
that inspired a German botanist name Matthias Schleiden ah to
(30:26):
look at a lot of plants and he was the
first guy to say, you know what, plants are composed
of cells. And he's having dinner one night with his
zoologist buddy. Yeah, and this is about a hundred years later. Yeah,
Theodore schran and said, you know what, dude, Uh, order
the wine and order the steak. Trust me, because this
place is fantastic. And uh, also, plants are made of cells.
(30:51):
Don't tell anyone. And he went, you know what, dude,
I have been investigating animals with microscopes and they're made
of cells too. And so they figured out at this dinner, Yeah,
that everything is made of cells. All living things are
made of cells. Boom. Okay, so this is huge. This
is a big advancement, right that we're hitting upon right now.
But it laid the further foundation, right, So initial scientific
(31:14):
inquiry led to further scientific inquiry and further scientific conclusions
and generalizations. All living things are made of cells, and
then it was extrapolated elsewhere. Right. Yeah, Like twenty years later,
Rudolph Virtual said, you know what, not only is everything
made of living cells, but they all come from pre
(31:35):
existing cells, which was a huge deal at the time
because people believed in spontaneous generation at the time, Like
if you left some um wheat seed and a sweaty shirt,
it would spawn mice. I think it was one of them.
There's a lot of weird ones pressed basil between some
bricks and you'll get a scorpion. Was one, like they
(31:57):
were really out there. Yeah, well the one that is
well not true, but the one that you could actually
see was rotten meat would eventually, uh spawn maggots. How
did they possibly get there? Yeah, spontaneous generation. But that's
the obvious explanation. And if you think about it, they're
working from Okam's razor and ocams. Razor says, the simplest
explanation is usually the right one, all all other things given. Well,
(32:21):
the thing is is spontaneous generation has never been shown
to be possible. If we get the sell thing over here,
let's investigate that. So this uh what was the guy's name? Virtual? Yes,
he's saying, okay, well, wait a minute, I get this
cell theory I'm working on that's been around for a
couple of decades. Hypothesis probably the cell hypothesis at the
(32:43):
nice catch. Don't feel bad though, because this article that
you sent said that scientists today like still like confuse
those terms just and there. The House of Works article
makes a good point in saying that science and everything
that has to do with it is in the scientific
method is very luid and open new interpretation and experimentation. Obviously,
(33:05):
but so he says, um, okay, this cell hypothesis, this
is a pretty good explanation for what we now call
spontaneous generation. He didn't do anything about it, He just
put it out there. Yeah, and then along comes Louis Pastier,
who does do something about it. He figures out a
great experiment to try to disprove spontaneous generation. Yeah, it's
(33:28):
pretty simple too. Um. He basically took a broth uh,
put equal amounts in two different beakers. One had a
straight neck and one had an S shaped neck. He
boiled it just to make sure everything and it was killed,
and then just let it sit there in the same conditions,
open to the to the world and are open to
(33:48):
the room like. It wasn't corked in other words, nor
he noticed that the one with the straight neck eventually
became cloudy and discolored, uh, meaning there was some junk
growing in there, and one in the S shaped neck
did not do anything. It remained the same. So think
what well, he thought that germs, that there were such
(34:09):
things as germs which leaving hoke and hook had already
shown um, And that if that in the S shaped
flask they had gotten trapped in the neck, in this
the open neck, they had been able to just enter
unobstructed and had generated there. The reason that the S
shape flask was still sterile was because there is no
(34:31):
such thing as spontaneous generation. If there were, then no
S shaped neck would impede anything like that, and boom,
there you have it. So he disproved that spontaneous generation
is a thing right through the scientific method. Exactly. Here's
the leap that a lot of people make, scientists included,
(34:53):
that really is a great disservice to science. He didn't
prove cell theory, right. What he did is take that
cell hypothesis and present some really persuasive evidence that it's
probably right. Yeah. But like this article you sent points out,
disproving something is just as important as proving something. So
(35:15):
here's the thing that's the most you can hope for
a science is disproving sure with science, unless you're talking
about math. With science, there's no such thing as proof.
A theory, even a law, universal law still has the
potential for being undermined by one single experiment, one single observation,
and therefore there is no real ultimate proof in science.
(35:37):
There's just theories and support for theories, and then ultimately
laws aim further and further support for laws, right, but
they're not proven. What science does ultimately is disproved things
or lend support for existing theories, are existing interpretations of
why things happen the way they do. And that's what
(36:00):
Pasture did. So if you look at the experiment, he
disproved spontaneous generation, but he lent support to the cell theory,
and probably with his experiment it went from the cell
hypothesis to the cell theory because it was just so persuasive.
And that's what a theory is. It means that a
lot of people out there who are reasonable say this
(36:21):
explanation is probably the right one. Yeah, it's predictive. If
you do it over and over, you're probably going to
get the same result. But that's not to say that
Pastures showed that if you do this a million in
one times that the S shaped flask won't turn cloudy.
He didn't prove that. You can't prove that, which is
again science can disprove and lent support can't prove a
(36:45):
very good point. So right after this message break, we're
going to get into the actual steps of the scientific method. Alright, dude,
I guess that long last we're there. Like you mentioned before,
(37:08):
the scientific method is fluid, and it's not like when
you get your science degree they hand you a little
laminated card like the Miranda rights that cop scary that
you know, list out all the different steps you have
to take. Um, But generally maybe I would we should
carry those around, all right, we should make little wallet
(37:29):
cards of the scientific method just to carry stuff you
should know about. Go on it. Oh yeah, I'll make
a million buttons random and sell them. Uh. Generally speaking, though,
it follows these steps. The first thing you do, like
we mentioned earlier, is you observe something. You ask a question.
Uh next, Like Darwin was known, I think when we
(37:49):
did our podcast on him too, he would spend like
a week on three square feet of ground. It was
like even longer than that. Remember, remember, wasn't it he
said that he did. He wasn't gonna MOA's lawn for
like three years because he wanted to see what what happened? Yeah,
so he's the ultimate and qualitative data of just observing,
writing things down and asking questions. And the reason you
(38:12):
ask your question is so you can narrow something down
like that. I think the example they use in here
is on Galapa ghosts, like the beaks of what bird?
Was it? Yeah? The finch bird. He noticed a bunch
of different beaks, so he finally posted a question like, um,
you know, I think these beaks are different for a
very specific reason, and I to find out why. Yes,
(38:34):
he said, what caused the diversification of finches on Gallopagus?
Who you should have done that with an accent. Well, yeah,
he would have had a British accent. Huh yeah, unless
he was pretending to be someone else. I think of
him as like, um, sounding like Hemingway or something. Oh yeah,
just drunken, violent kind of. But he wasn't. He was
(38:55):
like the opposite of that. Yeah. Well I saw that
the movie. Saw a picture his voice as the dude
that played him, who I can't remember right now, ed Norton. No,
I finally saw a birdman. Tho did you see that? Yeah?
Great movie? Um, I disagree you didn't like it? What? Wow?
(39:19):
That surprises me. Um, we'll get into that off year.
So uh sorry, you just threw me with that. And
he's on galapagost and he's like, what the heck with
all these different finches one small island? Why would there
be different species of finch so and why are they
(39:39):
all seeming to survive and coexist so? Well, what's what
makes Yeah? Then he leads to the question, what's making
all of these species of finches so diverse? Right? Or?
Bill Harris uses a pretty good example. That's something everyone
can understand, Like what car body shape is the best
for air resistance? Like one the shape like a box,
(40:01):
or one the shape like aerodynamic, like a bird, and
he carries that out. In the next step, you formulate
your hypothesis based on your you know, for knowledge and
maybe observations, like so, you know what, I think that
a car shaped like a bird is probably more aerodynamic
than one shape like a box. Yeah, if you're thinking,
if you're the type of person who's sitting around asking
(40:23):
questions about aerodynamics, you probably already have some sort of
sense that a box is less aerodynamic than a bird.
Boxes rarely fly unless they're carried by one of those
delightful Amazon delivery drones. They don't have those yet, right,
They're not gonna do that, are they. There's like a
pizza delivery drone service. Man, I think where you have
(40:47):
PiZZ are grilled cheese in New York and you go
stand on an XF you order and it like comes
and drops it. That is the dumbest thing of it.
And I can't wait to do it where they're making
a lot of money. Let's pretty funny. Um, Yet we
can't get food to the homeless somehow exactly, we can
drop a grilled cheese on someone's head. They're like you
homeless guy, get off that X exactly. Um, alright, So
(41:11):
your hypothesis, I don't think we ever mentioned, is typically
represented as an if then statement. Yeah, if you're doing
good sciences, Yeah, like if the cars profile. Uh, well,
the the example he uses if the body's profile related
to the amount of air it produces, which is the
more general statement. Yeah, that's like based on a theory. Yeah,
(41:34):
and it's gonna get more specific than the car designed
like the body of a bird will be more aerodynamic
than one like a box. So that's inductive reasoning, starting
with a broad statement and going to something narrow, and
it's if then at the same time. Yeah, and now
you have a test. You have a question that can
be answered, you can figure out a way to answer it. Yeah,
And he points out to this is pretty important that, uh,
(41:57):
your hypothesis, if it's formulated correctly, means it is testable
and it's falsifiable, which are often one and the same,
you know. Yeah, And that's again we go to the
people who say that they're they're soft sciences aren't real science.
There's pseudoscience because a lot of the data that they
come up with, a lot of the hypotheses they come
(42:19):
up with aren't falsifiable, they're not testable. It's a it's
a thing, it's an issue, it's a thing. So next
up in the steps, you're gonna experiment. And when you experiment,
you can't just go in there willy nilly and do
whatever you want. Um, you have to set up specific
conditions and they must be controlled, and you want to
(42:41):
everything that's supposed to be identical needs to be identical.
So basically, you have two variables. At least, you have
an independent variable and you have a dependent variable. And
if you're talking about car shape, that is the independent
variable in this study, that's the one that's manipulated exactly,
it's the one you're controlling. The independent variable is the
(43:03):
one you, the researcher, is controlling. So in this case,
you're controlling the shape of the car. You have yourself
a bird shaped car and you have yourself a box
shaped car. So the shape of the car changed because
you made it change. Now, when you blast a bunch
of air over it during your experiment, what you're measuring
is the dependent variable. So you're measuring what happens based
(43:27):
on the change that you made. That's right, and you
want to you, you want to study one single variable
at a time, basically, yeah, don't get fancy, just just
do good science, step by step methodical. You also have
to have your control group in any experiment, uh, and
an experimental group and the controlled group is what's gonna
allow you to compare the test results to that baseline measurement. Yeah,
(43:52):
and you need that baseline measurement, so it's not just
like chance. Basically exactly like if Pastor had just done
the S shaped now can nothing happen? He wouldn't have
necessarily been able to say that he was right, even
though he was right, he needed that control, which was
the open flask, right. Or with the cars, you need
two cars, like you said, one bird shaped and one
(44:14):
box shaped, right, Or then maybe in this case, since
the bird shape and the box shape both show up
in the hypothsis, you need a third like egg shaped
one or something like that. I bet that would be
pretty streamline. Yeah. Yeah. But the key though, is all
of those variables have to be um. All the other
variables have to be the same, like you have to
(44:34):
have them. They have to be the same weight, they
have to be painted the same, the tires, everything, the windows,
one can't have an antenna on the other not They've
all they've got to be identical other than the one variable, right,
the independent variable that you're that's the one you want different.
Everything else you want the same, or else it's possible that, oh,
well this one had bigger tires, so that actually made
(44:56):
it more aerodynamic. Yeah, and you're just doing yourself a
favor by doing all that stuff. You know, you want
to rule out everything else but that one variable. After that,
you want to analyze your data so you can draw
your conclusion. And sometimes it's kind of straightforward and easy.
Sometimes takes a lot of work and a lot of
(45:18):
various tools. Let's say you're just blasting a car and
a wind tunnel. You're measuring the wind resistance using certain
awesome instruments and that kind of stuff, and you're taking
that data, and then afterwards you're gonna analyze. You're gonna
compare the data that you gathered from the bird shaped
car the box shaped car, and then the control the
(45:40):
egg shaped car. You're gonna compare them and you're gonna say, well,
the wind resistance was less for the bird shaped car
then the box shaped car, which means that my hypothesis
was correct, and here all the data points, whereas Louis
paste or could just say look at the beakers exactly.
Don't be an idiot it I'm a scientist. That one's
(46:02):
got gross stuff. You can see it, right. But the
other thing about science to chuck ideally is let's say
that egg shaped one turned out the control group turned
out to have better wind resistance than anything. Well, just
by virtue of carrying out this experiment correctly, you would
have stumbled upon an even better aerodynamic design, and you
(46:24):
would have come up with that little egg shaped Mercedes
suv that was so huge, like ten years ago, the
Mercedes egg coming to a store near you. So um.
That's a big, big part of the scientific method is
carrying out a a an experiment, controlling the variables, analyzing
(46:46):
the data. And then there's a step that he missed
that is very rarely part of a scientific method list
that is to share your data. And this is a
huge problem with science right now. The article you said
it was really eye opening. Uh, scientific research has changed
the world. Now it needs to change itself. It's an
economist article. It's up on the internet. Yeah, it was
(47:08):
kind of scary that it's I mean, here's some of
the data he points out is one rule of thumb
among biotech venture capitalists is about half published research can't
even be replicated. And on the biotech firm and Jin
found that they could reproduce only six of their fifty
three landmark studies in cancer research. So you can't repeat
(47:32):
these things. It's like everyone's fighting for dollars in fame,
and maybe not fame, but to some of our career
advancements such that they're kind of not doing that final
step any longer. No, and it's not necessarily just them,
it's the other scientists aren't going back and saying, well,
let me see if your results are reproducible. People are
(47:54):
just taking it on faith. We need another Roger Bacon
to come along and be like, dude, we can't as
blindly accept that one person carried out this one study
and then just go do clinical trials on it without
anybody reproducing it to see if the results can be
verified independently. Yeah. Because uh, and this is a good
time to mention bias. There is such a thing as bias,
(48:16):
and it still happens. Um. A scientist is usually out
to prove something or disprove something that they want a
specific result. Like, even if you're super open minded, you're
probably hoping to disprove or prove something one way or
the other, and your confirmation bias might you know, even
(48:38):
if you don't think you're doing it, you might nudge
out some results that don't support your hypothesis, and so
you won't make it into that awesome journal um which
this author points out that journals need to start uh
putting in what he calls uninteresting results and experiments right
(48:59):
or like this if it's not sexy, right, or studies
that failed to show that their hypothesis was correct. Stuff
is disproved. Those things still need to well not even disproved. Well, yeah,
I guess it is disproved, but yes, like the guy
set out to say, like the red balloon uses less
helium than a silver balloon, and it turns out that
(49:20):
now they use the same amount of helium. Well, if
that study gets published and put out there into the
scientific literature on helium and balloons, then it's going to
prevent some other scientists down the road from wasting time, money,
and helium, which, as you'll remember, is an increasingly needed commodity. UM.
By carrying out the same experiment, whether whether the results
(49:43):
are positive or negative, or what the study is meant
to be shared. And that's the point of the scientific method,
is to to reduce bias. And if you follow it
all the way through ideally and do all of the steps,
including share your research whether it's happy or sad, then
science benefits. The world benefits, and by not doing that,
the world does not benefit. Yeah. He points out that
(50:06):
these days only four percent of published papers are quote
unquote negative results, and it used to be like or
more um And he says, because it's a lot of
it has to do with this sort of you know,
getting in these journals and you're the rockstar scientists and
this study is super sexy. Like if they kind of
(50:28):
quit going that route and made it what it should be,
then research dollars would be better spent and people could
you know, he said, the peer reviewed thing isn't even
all extract up to know that. He mentioned to study
from a medical journal that gave a bunch of peer
reviewers some stuff with deliberate errors inserted into the research,
(50:49):
into the studies, and even when they were told that
they were being tested to find this, they still missed
a lot of it. Yeah, so, yeah, the science used
to kind of re evaluate the way it's carrying out
sciences not science. The problem isn't science itself. The problem
isn't the scientific method. It's the way that it's being
used or not followed through. And a lot of it
has to do with academia and the people funding science. Yeah,
(51:11):
and he said, you know, these days there's a seven
million researchers, and back in the day, even in like
the nineteen fifties, there were like a few thousand maybe, right,
So there's just a lot of career competition, he calls
it careerism. And so you fake a result or two,
or you just nudge out some results that don't support
your hypothesis. You want the bigger paycheck or the fame
(51:34):
or notoriety, and all of a sudden, science is not science. Yeah,
you know, it's pseudoscience exactly. And speaking of pseudoscience, I
think we've reached the point where, um, we should talk
about the limitations of the scientific method, because it does
have its limits, right, Like the way that the scientific
method is set up, especially if you go through, um,
(51:57):
if you include falsification, which most science is now, say
is a thing like falsifiability of your hypothesis means that
you have a real scientific hypothesis there if it can
be disproven by some observation or some measurement or whatever,
then it's falsifiable. And if it's not falsifiable, then it's
not really science. So the thing is for something to
(52:21):
be falsifiable. And it was actually a philosopher that came
up with the concept of falsification, a guy named Carl
Popper in the ninet thirties, and he was the one
that said, like, you're you have to be able to
falsify something for it to be disproven or supported, and
if not, then it's pseudoscience. Well, part and parcel of
that is that what you're saying has to be able
(52:42):
to be detected empirically. There's some way that it has
to the presence of it has to be measured or inferred.
And so a lot of people say, well, then with
the scientific method it reaches it's the limits of its
current usefulness when it tries to explain the supernatural role.
When somebody says, like, are real exactly you can't prove that, well,
(53:06):
you also can't disprove it either, right, and So if
you are a scientist who says, uh, because the scientific
method can't prove or disprove the existence of ghosts or God,
there is no such thing as ghosts or God, you're
making a leap of faith just as much as the
(53:27):
same person who says science can't prove or disprove the
existence of ghosts or God, therefore God's and ghosts are real.
They're both leaps of faith. And that really the most
scientific approach to the existence of the supernatural, whether it
is a ghost or God, is that we simply don't know,
and that we cannot know scientifically. And but that doesn't
(53:48):
mean that it does exist or doesn't exist. And that's
saying that science shows that it does or doesn't exist,
is by by definition, the opposite of what science shows.
Science shows neither. It's not capable of showing or showing
that something doesn't exist. That's a good point. Uh. The
other place where science can get corrupted is when it
(54:10):
blurs the lines, or when people blur the lines between uh,
moral judgments and science value judgments. Like you can study
global warming, you can study cause and effect, you can
report data, But when you make that secondly to say,
and this is a scientist. I mean, someone can come
along and say global warming is bad, shouldn't drive your suv.
(54:32):
That's fine, But a scientist can't do a study and
say that because that's uh, that's a value judgment. And
that's where science can get corrupted pretty much. Right. You can.
You can study global warming and results until the cows
come home, but you can't assert that if you use
this lightbulb, you're a bad person, right, or um ocean
(54:54):
and acidification is bad. It's not good for humans, but
if you're a jelly fits it's awesome, you know. So, yes,
and again you made a great point. It's not science,
it's people using science to make value judgments. So ultimately,
the scientific method, although it does have its limitations in
that it needs empirical data, uh to prove or disprove something,
(55:19):
it's not that it's not flawed. That's not a flaw.
That's a limitation, and it's it's when it's misused then
it its results become flawed or skewed, and that's the
people doming it. Man, not science, that's right. It's pretty
interesting stuff. Yeah, man, this is a good one. I
thought so too. Man. Let us start out with a
bang boom all downhill from here. If you want to
(55:43):
know more about scientific method, check out that article on
the economists, check out explorables uh, and then of course
check out the scientific method in the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said that
it's time for listener mail, that's right, but quickly before
listener mail. Uh. We get asked by listeners all the time,
(56:06):
what can we do? Since you have a free podcast,
we can't pay for it. What can we do to
help you? Guys? And one thing you can do that
we would appreciate is, uh, go to iTunes and leave
a rating and a review for us. That makes big,
big difference in keeping us up there in the rankings,
which means more people find stuff you should know after
(56:26):
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ratings and reviews really help us out and it doesn't
cost you anything but a few minutes. Um, be honest,
We're not saying go leave us some great review, but
go leave us a great review. You said it, uh,
and told tell one person about stuff you should know.
(56:48):
We would appreciate that. To turn somebody onto the show
and um, that's it. That's our version of a pledge drive. Wow,
we do what once every three years. Not not very
obnoxious and it last alright. So on the listener mail,
this is from my sister in law. Actually, oh yeah,
there's some nepotism. Yeah, Jenny, Jenny Bryant, she mentioned in
(57:11):
the home school episode homeschooled her kids for a little while,
and she sort of corrected me. Uh, love the homeschooling episode, guys.
One very big trend these days in the home schooling
community is what Abbey, my niece does, which is hybrid homeschooling.
So two to three days a week she is at
school and then the rest of the time she does
(57:32):
a plant. She's not a plant. Uh, the rest of
time she's at home. So she says it's a great
option with curriculum provided and new topics sought at school
and then worked out at home. Many of these schools
are accredited making getting into college, including Ivy League schools,
Hassle Free and Abbey School has sports teams homecoming. Abbey
(57:53):
is actually an excellent volleyball player. Beta club newspaper staff
all the good stuff. The flexibility is great, for families,
and we are huge fans of how the hybrid approach
prepared students for college by allowing them time outside of
class to manage their work and life schedules. So that's
from Jenny Nice actually via text. The first listener mail
(58:15):
via text. How did you print that out? Did you
retype it and print it? No? Dude, are you serious?
You can print from texts? No, you just copy pasted
to an evening. Oh yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Men, then,
how in the world did you did you do that?
With your thoughts? I have a niece who is excellent
at volleyball too. Yeah, how would we should get them together?
(58:38):
He's I don't know, it's time of eleven, okay, something
like that. Abby just turned thirteen, so there. Oh, maybe
they face off against Yeah? Is she in Atlanta? Yes,
she's something Canton. You never know where's Evie. She's in Roswell.
But they I think with volleyball they kind of have
played all over the state. Bizarre if they played each other. Yeah,
we'll just see each other at a match one day,
(58:59):
on opposite sides of the court with our arms folded. Yeah,
what else? I got nothing else? Well, like Chuck said,
go leave us a review, and if you want to
get in touch with us, you can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can email us. Can we still do that? Ye? You
(59:21):
can't text me at uh stuff podcast at how stuff
works dot com and has always joined us at our
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
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