Science

From EvoWiki

Doing science means trying to find things out while trying to make as few mistakes as possible.

This means that before you try to find something out, you have to find out how to avoid mistakes. The collection of ways to avoid general mistakes is called the scientific method. This includes:

• Studying the special mistakes that can occur when you try to find out about a special topic.
• Amassing knowledge relevant to the topic. (To do the first two, you normally study a science, such as biology. You can also find out things biological without studying biology first, but this is risky - you will make mistakes a biologist wouldn't make, so make sure to follow the other points, especially the last.)
• Scanning the literature to find out what other scientists did before you on the same topic.
• When thinking up a hypothesis, making it testable.
• When testing a hypothesis, make clear beforehand what exactly you want to test.
• Writing down what you find out and making it public so lots of people can check if you got it right.
• When quoting what other scientists wrote, getting it right.
• When quoting what other scientists wrote, giving the exact source so your readers can check if you got it right.
• When reading what other scientists quote, checking if they got it right and inform them if they didn't.
• Letting knowledgeable scientists review what you wrote before you publish it.
• ...

Some more special methods are:

• If you try to find an explanation for some phenomenon, remember that there is always more than one explanation.
• If you measure something, note how accurate the measurement is. If you do computations using the measurements, calculate how exact the results are, using the accuracy of the measurements.
• If you do a statistical experiment, have a control group and do it double-blind.
• If you work with chemicals, keep your tools clean.
• If you work with microorganisms, keep your tools sterile.
• If you dig up things, take note of where you found them.
• ...

Examples of sciences:

• Mathematics
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Geology
• Astronomy
• Linguistics

Creationists fail miserably on almost all counts (everything except making it public), so what they do is definitely not science. Systems of ideas masquerading as science are called pseudosciences.