It’s the Science
On the home page of this site, I stated my three rules for science. They are:
Show up
Be honest
Don’t attach to the outcome.
Seems pretty simple, but there are a few things I’d like to add to each of these to explain them better.
Show up: Science is something you do. It’s a verb. It’s not technology, it’s not knowledge or even information. It is a process,. It is a series of steps we go through to try and get to an answer, or at least closer to one. In science it is often easier to prove something wrong than to prove something right. For example, if someone presents the hypothesis, “All dogs are poodles.,” then one must only find one Belgian Malinois to prove that hypothesis wrong. That’s kind of a trivial example, but I hope it makes a point. Scientists often use statistical methods to express how certain they are about something and this also causes confusion. For example, scientists might say they are 95% confident of something. That’s actually very good and it’s how we work. And it does not mean that we don’t know something. It means the predominance of the data is one way and we can express that numerically by statistics.
Be honest: Need I say more? I’m saddened every time I read about papers being retracted for dishonesty. It hurts us all. Sometimes thing don’t work out, and that’s part of science too.
Don’t attach to the outcome: This one is a little more subtle, but basically what I’m saying is ask the right questions, set up the experiment to test that, push the “go” button, and see what happens. Don’t expect something. Really. Open your mind and be ready for whatever shows up. This can be hard. Confirmation bias is a real thing and we are all guilty of it. We think we know what’s going to happen. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s that latter case when we may find something really interesting.
