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?
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:https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080130/full/451511a.html
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.
I think there is too much confusion not only about what the scientific method is, but how it should be defined.
If there is only “the” scientific method, then there is only one. However, should the term be defined as something that all scientists collectively actually do, as Goodstein and others argue, or is it something we SHOULD do?
On top of this matter, Weaver also argued that there are some things the scientific method should achieve, such as “a way of solving problems-not all problems, but a large class of important and practical ones. The problems with which science can deal are those in which the predominant factors are subject to the basic laws of logic, and are for the most part measurable. Science is a way of organizing reproducible knowledge about such problems; of focusing and disciplining imagination; of weighing evidence; of deciding what is relevant and what is not; of impartially testing hypotheses; of ruthlessly discarding data that prove to be inaccurate or inadequate; of finding, interpreting, and facing facts, and of making the facts of nature the servants of man.”
He also goes on to say that science should be concerned with value and purpose because only then, “can modern scientific man achieve a balanced good life, in which logic is the companion of beauty, and efficiency is the partner of virtue”.
Such problems are not defined in lists but the best structuring of what science is was meticulously organized by Peirce, who argued that pragmatism, is nothing but the logic of abduction and abduction is a way of structuring why-questions into a logical form.
All the issues addressed in this article can then be fit in the context of the scientific method, which integrates data collecting, delicate empiricism, hypothesis formulation/theory building, justification, experimental testing, and reasoning. Any controversy is artificial because all we’re doing is picking and choosing subsets of what we collectively define as “the scientific method”.