Derek+Belanger+Week+1

In our attempts to spread knowledge to the community about how, in fact, the scientific process works; we counter acted yourself and either spread information that was misleading and tends to not live up to the potential of the explanation or give out information that turns away people who normally would fit perfectly within that of the scientific community. This problem, according to Dr. Terry Halwes in his article “Dispelling common myths about science”, is one whose major fault comes from the fact that people, such as media and the education establishment, don’t truly understand what actually makes science work. How can people who don’t understand what a scientist is doing, fully grasp the way the scientist goes around doing his individual research. People begin to over generalize and make broad statements when they hear buzz words; for example, all nuclear power is attached to the word nuclear, which people tend to associate with the Atom Bomb and events such as Chernobyl. People assume that because science has to do with such high tech ideas now a days it is impossible for it to be as simple as common sense or that you need to have a PhD in Astro Physics to understand what makes the sky blue. Sometimes it is as if we over rate most discoveries and figure that we cannot duplicate the experiments not because we don’t have the right technology and funds but that we don’t have the discipline and superior thought processes that scientists posses. Why is it that we think these things? Is it because of the human tendency to obey authority figures, stemming from our own in adequacies? Or is it simply dismissal of things we don’t understand. The biggest piece, in my opinion, of the assumed authority of a scientist is that they are held to a higher standard than the rest of us. Again, with the Scientific “method” it makes the scientist appears as if he is following directions to knowledge and that he is superior to us because he can understand and follow these steps. Dr. Halwes refutes accepting the scientific method as anything but a bunch of sample ways to conduct research. He uses a number of points to argue his point. He says that in real scientific discoveries the power of observation may supersede the need for a theory or hypothesis. Another one is that scientists do not use a hypothesis or theory as a menu where all their discoveries are all ready planed in their prior knowledge but that it is a “map” where places need to still be explored and revised, but not only with the appearance of new evidence but simply new ways to explain old evidence. “The people who make these interesting but unsurprising observations may have a theory that covers the area they are studying, and they may not. They learn from their observations in either case.” (Halwes) Sometimes discoveries can come from original theories that are completely opposite from what the discovery is, but with the scientists freedom of observation he can make these discoveries free from the hindrances of the scientific method and its flaws. As Halwes puts it there are many holes in the method, if when testing a theory it is possible to make an error on the test hypothesis thus this error would make it seem that the original theory is wrong. Even though there are so many problems with this tool that people associate with general science it stays in their minds, why is that? I believe that it is like how most people call bandages, Band-aids, it is engraved in their mind and associated with the bandage that it seems to the general person that you can’t have one without the other. There really comes a difference between a fact and a truth. One thousand years ago it was a scientific fact and common knowledge that the earth was flat, but now a century later the truth has come out and changed these facts to better ourselves, it is not as some say the science is the art of understanding the world around us, but instead I offer a better explanation of what science is, Science is the art of changing ideas, science is a knowledge pyramid that helps us get to the truths we seek, but sometimes it is necessary for science to be wrong and outdated so that a new idea can take its place and thus create a cycle that brings us ever closer to the truth.