N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (GaryGaulin @ Oct. 17 2015,19:16) | | Quote (Texas Teach @ Oct. 17 2015,18:43) | | It is not a model for doing actual science. |
Since you are the one accusing PBS "Dinosaur Train" of teaching junk-science it's now up to you to explain your reasons for why in science a hypothesis is not actually "an idea you can test". |
The Barney clip is clearly about introducing the word hypothesis, rather than a lot of details about how to use them, and how to create them and test them.
Hypotheses need to be testable if they are to be of any use, but that's far from all you need to know about hypotheses.
A standard scientific approach is as follows: once you have a topic of interest, learn as much as you can about it: read all the literature and understand all the fundamentals, and then all the complications and peculiar details, and all the pertinent methods. Next, make sure that you have clear definitions for all the key concepts, because without clear and correct terminology, your thinking cannot be clear and correct. Next, think up as many alternative, mutually exclusive, possible explanations for the phenomenon of interest as you can, and devise feasible and logically valid ways to choose between the various hypotheses (if A is true, then we should see X, but if B is true then we should see Y). Obtain the information necessary to choose between the alternatives, probably by observation and/or experiment. Write up the results, as clearly as possible, and publish them.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as “systematic observation, measurement, and experimentation, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” Sean Carroll describes it very neatly as (paraphrased), ‘Think of every possible way the world could be - those are your hypotheses. Either before or after, look at how the world actually is - that’s your evidence, your data. Where possible, choose the hypothesis that provides the best fit to the data.’ Phil Plait says, “Watch the universe, see how it behaves, make guesses about why it’s doing what it’s doing, and then try to think of ways to support or disprove those ideas” and trying to figure out the ways we might be wrong is the best way to improve.
Add to all this that your problem and your hypotheses need to be interesting and non-trivial as well as testable and logically valid if they are to be of any value. ("I have an hypothesis that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning"; 12 hours later: "Yay, me!". Worse, "I have an hypothesis that angels will lift the sun into the eastern sky tomorrow to frighten away the Night Devil; 12 hours later, "Yay, me". Approximately as bad but for different reasons: "I have an hypothesis that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.")
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