Defining the scientific method
The editorial in the April issue of Nature Methods explores the role of methodological developments in the evolution of the scientific method. Some have argued that the ability to collect massive amounts of data and combine this with powerful correlative analyses will make hypothesis-driven research in biology obsolete. Others say that such 'investigation' is no longer science.
We suggest that some middle-ground will probably win out and both forms of inquiry will prove useful in answering important biological questions. What is your opinion?
Comments
Review title sounds "Nature Methods", but when I was attending Medicine courses at Genoa University, in 1950 years, Italian Epoistemology Masters were speaking of "the" Scientific Method! A trivial dogma, in my opinion, since ever. The best investigation is that which enlarges our scientific horizon with theories, everybody may falsify or corroborate. For instance, no local realm in biologial system beside the local realm, according to Lory's Experiment, I performed about two years ago:http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080130/full/451511a.html
Posted by: Sergio Stagnaro | April 4, 2009 12:47 PM
The argument used by Chris Anderson and others about the weakness of the scientific method in "omics" technology approaches is simply a consequence of the transition science is suffering between the classical genetics to the genomics strategies to address events in biological systems. Indeed I believe that it is only question of time to see again strong hypothesis coming out from global studies as the main driven force rather than pure correlation analysis. The fact that several hypothesis based in local chromatin studies were tried to be used for global studies just demonstrate again that we understand quite little of biological entities as global network systems.
Posted by: Marco Antonio Mendoza | May 12, 2009 07:56 PM