Scientific Method

• General way of organizing an investigation

• Repeatable experimentation

• Trying to observe and understand the natural laws in our universe

• Hypothesis: your educated guess of what it is you’re observing -> the more knowledge you have of a particular phenomenon the better your hypothesis

• Hypothesis must be testable

• The better you setup your experiment, the better the results/final conclusion

• The conclusion only has one statement: either support or reject your hypothesis

• Framework to consider ideas and evidence in a repeatable way

Science and Society

• The application of science for practical purposes is called technology

• Science is impartial and does not make ethical or moral judgements

• The role of society is to use scientific info to make informed decisions about the use of technology

Progression of the Scientific Method

• Hypothesis: a proposed explanation for a scientific phenomenon

• Theory: a more thoroughly tested and accepted hypothesis-> best explanation we have out of all other explanations

• Principle: more concrete concepts, but they don’t explain the broad subject (more specific than theories)

• Law: description of a phenomenon

• The more we understand a concept the more we can predict the outcome

• Want to know how everything absolutely works

Experimental Design

• Variables: changeable element of an experiment

  • Independent variable: manipulated variable

  • Dependent variable: shows response

  • Standardized variables: held constant for all subjects

• Important to have a diverse sample size because it will give you better results; conclusion applies to more people

• Placebo effect: when you truly believe you’ll get better/cured, you do

• All other factors must be held constant so only the IV and DV are correlated

• Controls: provides a basis for comparison to the experimental group

• Placebo: inert substance resembling treatment given to the experimental group

• Double blind design: neither researchers nor participants know who received the substance being evaluated until after the data is tabulated