New from Framing Logic, who quickly became one of my favourite channels.

  • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    There is a difference between confidence and expectation and faith. The scientific method has 5 steps.

    1. Question
    2. Research
    3. Hypothesis
    4. Experiment
    5. Conclusion

    Yes, as a general rule, scientists believe a certain outcome will occur. This isn’t faith, though, this is an expectation based on their knowledge and the research they’ve done to design the experiment. They then go on to ignore their beliefs and test it anyway. They do this because they don’t operate on faith, they operate on proof. And if the outcome isn’t something they expect, which has certainly happened, they then try to find out why, design new experiments, and perform further studies until they have confidence that they have a good understanding of what they’re studying.

    If they were operating on faith, they could skip all those steps and just go on what they believe, like with Aristotle believing women had fewer teeth. This leads into other related components of the scientific method: verification and repeatability. A good experiment can be repeated by another scientist and get the same results. And why would they repeat the test? Certainly not due to faith!