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Science:
A Curmudgeon’s View

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title text to download the free PDF file)
Science: A Curmudgeon’s View, a Mike Berger, PhD book     >Science: A Curmudgeon’s View, a Mike Berger, PhD book You can also order this
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The Scientific Method

Mike Berger, PhD

Science classes in school drill into your
minds the scientific method. You are taught
the steps: observe, hypothesize, test, and
replicate. This was the tried and true method
of good science. It was the basic way of
arriving at laws and facts. The method was
devoid of human bias.

It would be a Pangloss world if only this
was true. Science is not clean and neat
but fuzzy at best. Observation depends
on what pigeonholes you choose to put
your perceptions into. Your conceptual
framework has more to do with what you
see than what is out there.

Building conceptual frameworks and
operational hypotheses is a mere myth.
The experimenter slices and dices reality
until it fits their conceptual schemes. They
find what they’re looking for.

Testing a hypothesis empirically is no
less biased. It claims to remove the human
from the experiment, but it is the experimenter
who sets up the design. Alternative explanations
are rarely considered given the zeal of finding
what you’re looking for.

It’s a long-standing dictum of science that
findings must be replicated to be reliable.
If it isn’t reliable it can’t be valid. This narrow
view is nothing more than a social convention.
It would eliminate much of what we call science.
The astronomer can’t ask a nova to repeat itself.



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