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