Is the scientific method a myth?

A project I led produced a quirky result among the data. While participating students could clearly understand the many different approaches to science, they apparently still could not let go of the alternative conception that the practice of science is embodied in a single linear scientific method.

This is unsurprising because a single linear scientific method is drummed into students throughout their high school careers. Posing a hypothesis, collecting data, analysing the data, and drawing conclusions are demanded of inquiry-based school science activities. There, done. But it is a sterile science with all the objectivity of a robot missing its human creativity chip or the presence of other robots to critique the work and arrive at a consensus on the veracity of theories, observations and experiments.

The beauty of science is uncertainty. Scientists, at best, can only have a high level of confidence in their discoveries, not the absolute certainty (the conclusion) implied by *the* scientific method. Think E=MC squared. Einstein’s work superseded Newton and Kepler before him, but did that mean Newton’s laws of gravitation or Kepler’s laws of planetary motion were wrong? Not at all – Newton stood on Kepler’s shoulders, and Einstein stood on both their shoulders to build a more accurate grasp of our natural world.

The fallacy that the successes of science are driven by a linear scientific method is perhaps the mother of all alternative conceptions. So why do we still teach it to our students in isolation from the wider picture? There is a list of reasons – pedagogy and the difficulty of teaching science to high school students about how science is actually practised. Wong and Hodson (2010) could see this too – they were merely pointing out the difference between school science and science as it is practised in publishing the views of scientists about *the* scientific method. Tang et al. (2009) argue that rigid adherence to the scientific method can potentially disrupt the inquiry skills students are being encouraged to learn.

Over the years, students participating in one of my informal learning projects have said that they had not understood from their school science that scientists work at something pretty cool and fascinating and that how they do it applies to how evidence is evaluated for its evaluation strength and probability.

Students come to grips with the idea that science is modified through time as greater understanding is achieved. It does not mean scientists ‘got it wrong’ or are uncertain, but that our knowledge and tools limit science’s nature.

An example of the limits on our understanding of the natural world is the search for other Earths.  Before 1996 scientists could only speculate that other Earth-sized worlds existed around other stars. The Kepler mission, designed to detect extrasolar planets, greatly expanded the number of known extrasolar planets.

Kepler’s data indicates a high probability of millions of other worlds in our galaxy alone – which is itself one of at least one hundred billion other galaxies. Yet in all this vastness, we may still be alone – we might be the only intelligent species that has arisen that is capable of pondering the universe. Or not. We do not know – right now, at least. Again – did scientists apply a linear ‘scientific method’ to be able to make the discovery that Earth-sized planets do exist around other stars?  Or was it somewhat messier than that, with failures and successes along the way?

In his 1992 book “Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method”, Henry Bauer says philosophers had struggled for a long time trying to explain why the scientific method produced failures and successes. “The scientists in practice do not actually use the scientific method, and that the scientific method cannot adequately explain the success of science does not mean that the method is not worth talking about, that it is not  worth holding as an ideal.” (p147)

So why do we teach students that science is done in a cookbook recipe approach?  Few science teachers have science research experience to science does not follow a linear path, and some of these teachers become curriculum developers. The loop is never-ending, but change is afoot in New South Wales, where students can undertake a real science research project guided by university mentors.

Only 700 out of around 25,000 students in NSW currently undertake the new science extension research project.  As the number of students undertaking the project grows, it will put pressure on reducing didactic and transmissive education to engagement at university that accounts for the needs of learners with research experience.

References:

Bauer, H.H. (1992). Scientific literacy ad the myth of the scientific method. The University of Illinois Press, Urban and Chicago

Wong, S.L and Hodson, D. (2010). From the horse’s mouth: What scientists say about scientific investigation and scientific knowledge. Science Education (93) 1:109-130

Tang, X., Coffey, J.E., Elby, A. and Levin, D.M. (2010)  The scientific method and scientific inquiry: Tensions in teaching and learning. Science Education (94) 29-47