Scientific Method : A Reply

I received an interesting reply to a comment I made on the next to the last blog post, and I thought I'd post my reply here.

{Originally posted by Anonymous}
The problem I have with this argument is that you place "science" on a pillar higher than a persons experience. The problem is that science as far as I understand is just people making observations. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems that if I were to call myself a scientist my documented opinion would be respected more.

I think your definition of what science is and does may be part of the problem.

Science is not just people making observations, although that is the first part of it. An observation is made about some phenomenon, and a hypothesis is generated. An example of such a hypothesis would be "acupuncture is effective in relieving pain."

Once generated, an experiment can be designed in order to test it. The testing is the largest part of what science does, and without it we could gather no relevant information. An example of such testing would be, using the earlier example, testing the effects of acupuncture in comparison with the effects of conventional medicine and the effects of no treatment at all. Using placebo controls (sham acupuncture) and a double blind procedure (both the subjects and the experimenters are made unaware of the details of a study in order to avoid bias), once could make a reasonable conclusion based on the results.

After this study is published, another step must be taken, and that's peer review & replication. Not every scientific study is a good one, and as many people have pointed out for different reasons, "Science" is not always right. Studies get published, and in order to validate the results of those studies, they must be done again by a third party using the same testing parameters. If the results are similar, we can be reasonably certain that the results are true. This step of science is happening all the time, and new technologies and theories are being developed all the time based on the results of such studies.

There's a lot more detail to the process of science than I've layed out here, and I may have missed some important things, but this is just to show that the image of the scientist in his white lab coat giving out his opinion from an ivory tower and expecting that opinion to be taken without question is not a valid image of what science is.

As far as personal experience goes, it's a very simple process. I experience something, then interpret what it is based on the available information that I'm familiar with. Now, I could be wrong, but since it's just a personal experience, there's really no system in place to test whether or not my experience was real. I misinterpret reality ALL the time, and I'll bet you do too. The other day I thought I saw something out the corner of my eye, and I turned my head and it was gone. A small hallucination, but a real one. When I was a kid I could have sworn I heard sleigh bells on Christmas Eve, but it was just wishful thinking.

When our brains lie to us, we often have to rely on other people's experience and expertise in order to guide ourselves though our misconceptions. And really, that's all it is to trust the consensus of science.