The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: Things We Believed Before the Scientific Method

20:43All right, you brought up a point I think we should go ahead and just get right to, my friend. Let's do it. Hypotheses and theories.

20:52Chuck Bryant:That's tough to say together. I know. You did it, though. One thing that really chafes my hide is when you hear poo-poors of whatever scientific theory say, well, it's just a theory. Yeah. And where was this thing that you found that poo-pooed that? Do you remember what website that was? No? No. Although I do want to give a shout out now that you mentioned it to Explorables. Yeah. It's like an online university, basically, of free courses. and there is one on scientific reasoning that is just amazing. It's like a huge rabbit hole. You go down and you start clicking on the embedded links and you end up understanding all sorts of stuff.

21:34Chuck Bryant:So go check that one out. If you like understanding stuff. Right. So that's one of the things that bug me if someone says it's just a theory and this does a great job of kind of throwing that out the window because it's basically mixing up the two definitions of theory. Yeah, there's like a colloquial definition that people use every day that doesn't really have much to do with the scientific use of it. Yeah, like I got a theory that Jerry in her one-hour bathroom breaks every day is really playing words with friends in the lobby. I think your theory is correct. So that's a theory in the colloquial meaning.

22:11Right. As far as science goes, a theory is not just something you postulate, say this may or may not be true. A theory is beyond the hypothesis, and it's something that is strongly supported in many different ways. And there's all kinds of evidence to support something that eventually becomes a theory.

22:31Chuck Bryant:Right. So your theory about Jerry's bathroom breaks in the scientific world would be a hypothesis. What? Fact? Yeah. Well, it would be a scientific law. Yeah. But it ultimately would begin as a hypothesis, a hunch, based on intuition, based on data you've collected, observations, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Where, like, you know, you've seen that Jerry goes to the bathroom for, like, an hour to stretch. Yeah. Frequently, when she comes back, she's finishing up a game of Words with Friends. Sure. You've heard that she's been spotted in the lobby during these times. Yeah. So your hypothesis is that while she is gone for these hour-long bathroom breaks, she's actually down in the lobby playing words with friends, right?

23:16Yeah, based on knowledge, observation, and logic.

23:20Chuck Bryant:Right. So let's say that you decided to set up an experiment, and you experimented, and you went and you found Jerry playing words with friends five different times, and you told me about it. Right. And I was like, I'm going to run that same experiment exactly the way you did. Yeah. Right? I would test that same hypothesis. if I found the same results to be true, then what you would have come up with, your hypothesis, would move to basically a theory. Yeah. That is this widely accepted thing, this explanation that Jerry is not actually in the bathroom. She's downstairs playing with friends. It'd be the Jerry bathroom break theory.

23:56Chuck Bryant:That's right. And then if it turns out that you find that Jerry spending an hour a day pretending to be in the bathroom, but actually being downstairs playing words with friends if the universe couldn't exist without her doing that every day you would have a scientific law that's right I think that was a good example you came up with that's a great example as it turns out I guess the point here is when you hear someone say in an argument well that's just a theory just punch them in the head and then tell them what we just said about the bathroom breaks. Yeah. And they'll say, who's Jerry? Or just cue up that whole bit and stand outside of their window wearing a trench coat and holding a boom box over your head with the smug look on your face.

24:49All right. So should we go back in the old Wayback Machine a little bit and just talk a little bit about how the scientific method came to be? Yes.

25:05Man, this thing, what are you running this on these days?

25:08Chuck Bryant:What do you mean? To straight kerosene? The fumes in here are killing me. Sorry about that. I'm trying to go green, you know. Kerosene is not green. Diesel, maybe? I'm choking. Biodiesel, how about that? Okay. The Wayback Machine will run on French fry grease. That would be fine. All right, I'll get to work on that. I could handle this fumes. So you teased us with the Renaissance, and the reason the Renaissance was so awesome and necessary was because of something else we've talked about, which was the Dark Ages. Which, remember, that's a rationalist's disparaging term for this era. That's right.

25:47But I think sort of rightfully so. Okay. Because right before the Dark Ages until about a century after, there was not much advancement at all in the realm of scientific advancement.

26:00Chuck Bryant:No, it's true. That's true. That's hard to argue with that. And the reason why is, again, science wasn't really born yet. And there is a huge struggle between rationalism and mysticism. And ultimately, we're living in the age of rationalism now. Yeah. And we should point out, too, that this is mainly in Europe. Over in the Islamic world, as I think we had a listener mail point out, there were a lot of advancements being made. Right. just sort of flying under the European radar at the time because some say the Catholic Church kind of kept science under its thumb for a while. Yeah. Well, it was a pretty big threat.

26:35Yeah. And said, you know, you can't do this stuff. You can't experiment like this, and don't ask these questions.

26:41Chuck Bryant:Right. Because here are your answers. Yeah. But eventually the Renaissance came about in the 12th century, and people woke up and saw some of the work in the Islamic world and said, you know what, maybe let's start reading up on Aristotle and Ptolemy and Euclid once again. Yeah. They're like, we forgot about these guys. Yeah. I mean, it literally kind of vanished for a while. It did from the West. Yes. Fortunately, it was still around in its home places. But yes, in the West, they were lost. The Roman stuff was almost entirely lost because it was being suppressed by the locals. And I think the Greek knowledge was completely vanished.

27:17Chuck Bryant:Yes. Somehow they got it. There was some, we got another listener mail after the Enlightenment one. They said that it was an Islamic scholar who was the one who translated Aristotle into Latin or something like that. And that without this guy, the West wouldn't have had much to start with. Because that's where that birth of rationalism came from, was this rediscovery of Greek and Roman classical thought. Yeah. And this was the basis of scientific inquiry, of rationalism, of saying like, okay, there's set rules to things. And we need to discover these rules and how the principles of how the universe works.

27:57Chuck Bryant:Like there has to be principles. And we need to find this in a rational, methodical way. And right out of the gate, Europe said, oh, okay, well, whatever you say is right then, Aristotle. We're used to just believing everything without questioning it. And luckily, Albert Magnus, I think, is who it was. Albertus. Was it Albertus Magnus or Roger Bacon who said, no, it was Bacon. Roger Bacon, who just has this great name, Raj Bacon. The Bacon brothers? Yeah. He said - Francis and Roger? Right. They weren't brothers though. But were they related at all? You know, I looked that up and I don't think people know either way.

28:32I don't think there's any proof, but a lot of people think because of their names and the way things went back then that they may very well have been related.

28:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and I mean they were separated by 300 or so years. Although Roger was a monk, so he would not have had children. So if they were related, it wasn't necessarily through his line. Gotcha. You know. Yeah. It could have been a nephew or something. Yeah. Or his brother Kevin might have had the line that matched. So Roger was the one who said, everybody stop. Just because Aristotle wrote something doesn't mean it's fact, especially when we find contradictions to it. Yeah. Aristotle's not automatically right. Right, and this is a huge advancement. Yeah, and Albertus Magnus was the one, I believe, who said, you know, this thing called revealed truth, which is basically God says this instead of a truth found by experimenting, is maybe we should experiment instead and not take this revealed truth as the truth.

29:33Chuck Bryant:Right, and we mentioned in the Enlightenment episode as well about scholasticism, about using scientific inquiry to explain theology. which was you're still working from a theological standpoint but you're starting to use scientific inquiry and the idea that you shouldn't just accept things as truth. That was again a huge breakthrough. Francis Bacon, the other Bacon brother. He's one of the heroes of the story. Yeah, he was an attorney and philosopher. And possibly Shakespeare. Oh really? I never heard that. Oh yeah. Interesting. So what do you mean? Like wrote those under a pseudonym? Yeah. Huh.

30:16And the Shakespeare sister was the other theory too, right? That it was a woman?

30:20Chuck Bryant:I've heard that, yeah. And she couldn't like, you know, women couldn't be the playwright. So her dumb brother William took credit. Was it her brother? I think that was one of the theories. Huh. That was a good Smith song too. Shakespeare sister, was that the name of it? Yeah. Wasn't it a band too? I think it was. Was it? Maybe. So anyway, he was a philosopher and a lawyer, and he said, you know what, the Baconian method basically became the scientific method. He was the first dude who really said, this is the steps that you should take to investigate science. Right, there has to be a framework.

31:02Chuck Bryant:And the whole point of this, that we take this so for granted now, because it's so intuitively and on its face right as far as scientific inquiry goes. But this is an enormous breakthrough to say, follow these steps, this framework, and if everybody who carries out science follows the same framework, then science will be universal and interchangeable. And anyone in the world, and not just now, but anytime, will be able to carry out the same experiment and will be able to verify or disprove it. And that is amazing that that happened. That's why Francis Bacon is one of the heroes of the story. And he didn't come up with this entirely on his own, but he was the one who said, this is what we're gonna do, I'm gonna give it a name, I'm going to spell it out, and from now on, you can call me the dad of the scientific method.

32:01Yeah, and that's why Newton was such a rock star because he so rigorously stuck to the scientific method that all these centuries later his systems of laws, they have stood the test of time. And I think it's a good point to bring up too that the collaboration of scientists is really the hallmark of advancement and moving forward. It's not working in a vacuum. It's sharing your ideas and working with one another. And the whole little sidebar here on cell theory I thought was pretty cool, which was when science quit, or not quit, but started looking at small things instead of looking at the universe around them and at the stars.

32:45Chuck Bryant:Right. And said basically, you know, through the advancement of lens grinding, Antonio van Leeuwenhoek, specifically a Dutch tradesman, was pretty good at making simple microscopes. And all of a sudden, contemporaries like Robert Hooke said, you know what, let's start looking at tiny things. Because therein might lie the answer to many, many things. And they were right. Robert Hooke found cork. He discovered cells by looking at cork through an early microscope. So in this story, science is hastened by technological advancement, lens grinding, to make microscopes. And then this new technology is used to further science, right?

33:26Yeah, it's like mutual inspiration between Lievenhuk and Hook. Lievenhuk. Yeah, it was neat.

33:33Chuck Bryant:Because Hook heard about Lievenhuk's microscopes, got his hands on one or a microscope, looked at a cork and said, oh, there's such a thing as cells. Lievenhuk said, oh, that's pretty neat. Let me try. And he said, oh, there's such a thing as, quote, little animals, which we call protozoan bacteria. And one of the royal societies, after Lievenhuk presented his findings, turned back to Hook and said, hey, Hook, we know you're pretty handy with the microscope. Can you confirm Lievenhuk's findings? Are there little animals? Hook said, there are indeed. I can see them with my microscope. That's right.

34:11And that inspired a German botanist named Matthias Schleiden to look at a lot of plants. And he was the first guy to say, you know what? Plants are composed of cells. and he was having dinner one night with his zoologist buddy.

34:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and this is about 100 years later. Yeah, Theodore Schwan, and said, you know what, dude, order the wine and order the steak. Trust me, because this place is fantastic. And also, plants are made of cells. Don't tell anyone. And he went, you know what, dude, I have been investigating animals with microscopes, and they're made of cells too. And so they figured out at this dinner that everything is made of cells. All living things are made of cells. Boom. Okay, so this is huge. This is a big advancement, right, that we're hitting upon right now. Huge. But it laid the further foundation, right?

35:04Chuck Bryant:Yes. So initial scientific inquiry led to further scientific inquiry and further scientific conclusions and generalizations. All living things are made of cells. And then it was extrapolated elsewhere, right? Yeah, like 20 years later, Rudolf Virchow said, You know what, not only is everything made of living cells, but they all come from pre-existing cells, which was a huge deal at the time because people believed in spontaneous generation at the time. Like if you left some wheat seed in a sweaty shirt, it would spawn mice, I think, was one of them. Gross. There's a lot of weird ones. Press basil between some bricks and you'll get a scorpion was one.

35:48Chuck Bryant:Like they were really out there. Yeah, well, the one that is, well, not true, but the one that you could actually see was rotten meat would eventually spawn maggots. Right. How did they possibly get there? Yeah, spontaneous generation. That's the obvious explanation. And if you think about it, they're working from Occam's Razor. And Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Yeah. All other things given. Well, the thing is, is spontaneous generation has never been shown to be possible. Right. If we've got the cell thing over here, let's investigate that. So this, what was the guy's name, Virchow?

36:25Chuck Bryant:Yes. He's saying, okay, well, wait a minute. I've got this cell theory I'm working on that's been around for a couple of decades. Cell hypothesis, probably. Cell hypothesis at the point. Nice catch. Don't feel bad, though, because this article that you sent said that scientists today still confuse those terms. Yeah. Just colloquially. And the HowStuffWorks article makes a good point in saying that science and everything that has to do with it in the scientific method is very fluid and open to interpretation and experimentation, obviously. So he says, okay, this cell hypothesis, this is a pretty good explanation for what we now call spontaneous generation.

37:05Chuck Bryant:He didn't do anything about it. He just put it out there. Yeah. And then along comes Louis Pasteur, who does do something about it. He figures out a great experiment to try to disprove spontaneous generation. Yeah, it's pretty simple, too. He basically took a broth, put equal amounts in two different beakers. One had a straight neck and one had an S-shaped neck. He boiled it just to make sure everything in it was killed. Yeah. And then just let it sit there in the same conditions open to the world or open to the room. Like it wasn't corked, in other words. and he noticed that the one with the straight neck eventually became cloudy and discolored meaning there was some junk growing in there and the one in the S-shaped neck did not do anything.

37:54It remained the same. So that led him to think what?

37:57Chuck Bryant:Well he thought that germs, that there were such things as germs which Lee and Hoke and Hook had already shown and that in the S-shaped flask they had gotten trapped in the neck in the open neck, they had been able to just enter unobstructed and had generated there. The reason that the S-shaped flask was still sterile was because there is no such thing as spontaneous generation. If there were, then no S-shaped neck would impede anything like that. And boom, there you have it. So he disproved that spontaneous generation is a thing, right? That's right, through the scientific method. Exactly. Here's the leap that a lot of people make, scientists included, that really is a great disservice to science.

38:46Chuck Bryant:He didn't prove cell theory. Right. What he did was take that cell hypothesis and present some really persuasive evidence that it's probably right. Yeah, but like this article you sent points out, disproving something is just as important as proving something. So here's the thing. That's the most you can hope for with science is disproving. Sure. With science, unless you're talking about math, with science, there's no such thing as proof. A theory, even a law, a universal law, still has the potential for being undermined by one single experiment, one single observation. Right. And therefore, there is no real ultimate proof in science.

39:28Chuck Bryant:There's just theories and support for theories. Right. And then ultimately, laws aim further and further support for laws. Right. Right? But they're not proven. What science does ultimately is disprove things or lend support for existing theories or existing interpretations of why things happen the way they do. And that's what Pasteur did. So if you look at that experiment, he disproved spontaneous generation, but he lent support to the cell theory. And probably with his experiment, it went from the cell hypothesis to the cell theory. Right. Because it was just so persuasive. And that's what a theory is.

40:08Chuck Bryant:It means that a lot of people out there who are reasonable say this explanation is probably the right one. Yeah, it's predictive. If you do it over and over, you're probably going to get the same result. Right. But that's not to say that Pasteur showed that if you do this a million and one times, that the S-shaped flask won't turn cloudy. Yeah. He didn't prove that. You can't prove that, which is, again, science can disprove and lens support can't prove. Very good point. So right after this message break, we're going to get into the actual steps of the scientific method.

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42:21Chuck Bryant:Stuff you should know. All right, dude. I guess, at long last, we're there. Like you mentioned before, the scientific method is fluid. and it's not like when you get your science degree they hand you a little laminated card like the Miranda rights that cops carry that list out all the different steps you have to take. But generally... Oh, maybe. Yeah? I would... We should carry those around. We should make little wallet cards with a scientific method just to carry them. With the Stuff You Should Know logo on it. Oh, yeah. We'll make a million bucks. We could brand them and sell them. Yeah. generally speaking though it follows these steps the first thing you do like we mentioned earlier is you observe something, you ask a question next like Darwin was known I think when we did our podcast on him you would spend like a week on three square feet of ground on his property it was like even longer than that remember he said that he wasn't going to mow his lawn for like three years because he wanted to see what happened Yeah, so he's the ultimate in qualitative data of just observing, writing things down, and asking questions.

43:33And the reason you ask your question is so you can narrow something down. I think the example they use in here is on Galapagos, like the beaks of, what word was it? The finches. Yeah, the finch bird. He noticed a bunch of different beaks. So he finally posed the question, like, you know, I think these beaks are different for a very specific reason. Right. And I aim to find out why. Yes.

43:57Chuck Bryant:He said, what caused the diversification of finches on Galapagos? Ooh. He should have done that with an accent. Yeah, he would have had a British accent, huh? Yeah. Huh. Unless he was pretending to be someone else. I always think of him as sounding like Hemingway or something. Oh, yeah? Drunk and violent? Kind of. But he wasn't. He was like the opposite of that. Yeah, well, I saw the movie. So I picture his voice as the dude that played him, who I can't remember right now. Ed Norton. No. I finally saw Birdman, though. Did you see that? Yeah? Yeah. Great movie. I disagree. Oh, you didn't like it?

44:39No. What? Wow. That surprises me. We'll get into that off the air.

44:49Chuck Bryant:So sorry you just threw me with that. Make an observation. Yes. He's on Galapagos, and he's like, what the heck's with all these different finches? It's one small island. Why would there be different species of finch? So ask the question. And why are they all seeming to survive and coexist so well? Then he leads to the question, what's making all of these species of finches so diverse? Right. Or Bill Harris uses a pretty good example that's something everyone can understand. what car body shape is the best for air resistance. Like one that's shaped like a box or one that's shaped like aerodynamic like a bird.

45:26And he carries that out and the next step, you formulate your hypothesis based on your foreknowledge and maybe observations like, say you know what, I think that a car shaped like a bird is probably more aerodynamic than one shaped like a box.

45:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah, if you're thinking, if you're the type of person who's sitting around asking questions about aerodynamics, you probably already have some sort of sense that a box is less aerodynamic than a bird. That's right. Boxes rarely fly, unless they're carried by one of those delightful Amazon delivery drones. They don't have those yet, right? They're not going to do that, are they? There's like a pizza delivery drone service, I think, where you have pizza or grilled cheese in New York, and you go stand on an X after you order, and it comes and drops it. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Yeah?

46:18And I can't wait to do it. I'll bet they're making a lot of money. That's pretty funny. Yet we can't get food to the homeless somehow. Exactly. We can drop a grilled cheese on someone's head. Right. They're like, you homeless guy, get off of that X. Yeah, exactly. All right, so your hypothesis, I don't think we ever mentioned, is typically represented as an if-then statement.

46:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, if you're doing good science. Yeah, like if the car's profile, well, the example he uses, if the body's profile related to the amount of air it produces, which is the more general statement. Yeah, that's like based on a theory. Yeah, and it's going to get more specific. Then the car design like the body of a bird will be more aerodynamic than one like a box. So that's inductive reasoning, starting with a broad statement and going to something narrow. And it's if then at the same time. Yeah. And now you have a test. You have a question that can be answered. You can figure out a way to answer it.

47:16Yeah, and he points out too, this is pretty important, that your hypothesis, if it's formulated correctly, means it is testable and it's falsifiable.

47:25Chuck Bryant:Which are often one and the same. True. You know? Yeah. And that's, again, we go to the people who say that soft sciences aren't real science. They're pseudoscience because a lot of the data that they come up with, a lot of the hypotheses they come up with aren't falsifiable. They're not testable. Right. It's a thing. It's an issue. It's a thing. So next up in the steps, you're going to experiment. And when you experiment, you can't just go in there willy-nilly and do whatever you want. You have to set up specific conditions and they must be controlled. That's the key. And you want to, everything that's supposed to be identical needs to be identical.

48:07Chuck Bryant:So basically you have two variables. at least. You have an independent variable and you have a dependent variable. And if you're talking about car shape, that is the independent variable in this study. Yeah, that's the one that's manipulated. Exactly. It's the one you're controlling. The independent variable is the one you, the researcher, is controlling. So in this case, you're controlling the shape of the car. You have yourself a bird-shaped car and you have yourself a box-shaped car. So the shape of the That car changed because you made it change. Now when you blast a bunch of air over it during your experiment, what you're measuring is the dependent variable.

48:46Chuck Bryant:So you're measuring what happens based on the change that you made. That's right. And you want to study one single variable at a time, basically. Yeah, don't get fancy. Just do good science, step by step, methodical. You also have to have your control group in any experiment, and an experimental group, and the control group is what's going to allow you to compare the test results to that baseline measurement. Yeah. And you need that baseline measurement. So like Pasteur. You know, it's not just like chance, basically. Exactly. Like if Pasteur had just done the S-shaped neck and nothing happened.

49:23Chuck Bryant:Right. He wouldn't have necessarily been able to say that he was right, even though he was right. He needed that control, which was the open flask. Right. Or with the cars, you need two cars, like you said. one bird shaped and one box shaped. Right, or maybe in this case since the bird shape and the box shape both show up in the hypothesis, you'd need a third egg shaped one or something like that. I bet that would be pretty streamlined. Yeah. But the key though is all of those variables have to be, all the other variables have to be the same. Like you have to have them, they have to be the same weight, they have to be painted the same, the tires, everything, the windows.

50:03one can't have an antenna and the other not. They've got to be identical other than the one variable.

50:09Chuck Bryant:Right, the independent variable, that's the one you want different, everything else you want the same, or else it's possible that, oh, well, this one had bigger tires, so that actually made it more aerodynamic. Yeah, and you're just doing yourself a favor by doing all that stuff. Yeah. You want to rule out everything else but that one variable. Yeah. After that, you want to analyze your data, so you can draw your conclusion. And sometimes it's kind of straightforward and easy. Sometimes it takes a lot of work and a lot of various tools to draw it out. Let's say you're just blasting a car in a wind tunnel.

50:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah. You're measuring the wind resistance using certain awesome instruments and that kind of stuff, and you're taking that data. And then afterward, you're going to analyze it. You're going to compare the data that you gathered from the bird-shaped car, the box-shaped car, and then the control, the egg-shaped car. Right. You're going to compare them, and you're going to say, well, the wind resistance was less for the bird-shaped car than the box-shaped car, which means that my hypothesis was correct. Right, and here are all the data points, whereas Louis Pasteur could just say, look at the beakers.

51:20Exactly. Don't be an idiot. Yeah. I'm a scientist.

51:24Chuck Bryant:That one's got gross stuff. You can see it. Right, but the other thing about science too, Chuck, ideally, is let's say that egg-shaped one turned out, the control group turned out to have better wind resistance than anything. Well, just by virtue of carrying out this experiment correctly, you would have stumbled upon an even better aerodynamic design. That's right. And you would have come up with that little egg-shaped Mercedes SUV. Yeah. That was so huge like 10 years ago. The Mercedes egg. Right. Coming to a store near you. So that's a big, big part of the scientific method is carrying out an experiment, controlling the variables, analyzing the data.

52:09Chuck Bryant:And then there's a step that he missed that is very rarely part of a scientific method list. Oh, yeah. That is to share your data. Oh, sure. And this is a huge problem with science right now. Yeah, that article you sent was really eye-opening. Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself. Yeah, it's an economist article. It's up on the internet. Yeah, it was kind of scary. Here's some of the data he points out. One rule of thumb among biotech venture capitalists is about half, 50 % of published research, can't even be replicated. And a biotech firm, Amgen, found that they could reproduce only six of their 53 landmark studies in cancer research.

52:53Right. So you can't repeat these things. It's like everyone's fighting for dollars in fame, maybe not fame, but career advancement, such that they're kind of not doing that final step any longer.

53:06Chuck Bryant:No, and it's not necessarily just them. It's the other scientists aren't going back and saying, well, let me see if your results are reproducible. People are just taking it on faith. We need another Roger Bacon to come along and be like, Like, dude, we can't just blindly accept that one person carried out this one study and then just go do clinical trials on it without anybody reproducing it to see if the results can be verified independently. Yeah, because, and this is a good time to mention bias. There is such a thing as bias, and it still happens. A scientist is usually out to prove something or disprove something that they want a specific result.

53:49like even if you're super open-minded you're probably hoping to disprove or prove something one way or the other and your confirmation bias might you know even if you don't think you're doing it you might nudge out some results that don't support your hypothesis right and so you won't make it into that awesome uh journal yeah um which this author points out that journals need to start putting in what he calls uninteresting results in experiments. Right, or... Like the stuff that's not sexy.

54:23Chuck Bryant:Right, or studies that failed to show that their hypothesis was correct. Yeah, stuff that's disproved. Those things still need to... Well, not even disproved. Well, yeah, I guess it is disproved. But yes, like the guy set out to say that a red balloon uses less helium than a silver balloon. Right. And it turns out that, no, oh, they use the same amount of helium. Well, if that study gets published and put out there into the scientific literature on helium and balloons, then it's going to prevent some other scientists down the road from wasting time, money, and helium, which, as you'll remember, is an increasingly needed commodity, by carrying out the same experiment.

55:04Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Whether the results are positive or negative or what, the study's meant to be shared. And that's the point of the scientific method it is to reduce bias, and if you follow it all the way through, ideally, and do all of the steps, including share your research, whether it's happy or sad, then science benefits, the world benefits. And by not doing that, the world does not benefit. Yeah, he points out that these days, only 14 % of published papers are quote-unquote negative results, and it used to be like 30 % or more. And he says, because a lot of it has to do with this sort of getting in these journals, and you're the rock star scientist, and this study is super sexy.

55:50If they kind of quit going that route and made it what it should be, then research dollars would be better spent and people could you know, he said the peer-reviewed thing isn't even all it's cracked up to be anymore.

56:01Chuck Bryant:He mentions a study from a medical journal that gave a bunch of peer reviewers some stuff with deliberate errors inserted into the research into the studies and even when they were told that they were being tested to find this they still missed a lot of it yeah so yeah the science used to kind of reevaluate the way it's carrying out science it's not science the problem isn't science itself the problem isn't the scientific method it's the way that it's being used or not followed through and a lot of it has to do with academia and the people funding science. Yeah, and he said, you know, these days there's up 7 million researchers, and back in the day, even in like the 1950s, there were like a few thousand maybe.

56:43Right. So there's just a lot of career competition. He calls it careerism. And so you fake a result or two, or you just nudge out some results that don't support your hypothesis, because you want the bigger paycheck, or the fame or notoriety, and all of a sudden science is not science. You know? it's pseudoscience.

57:04Chuck Bryant:Exactly. And speaking of pseudoscience, I think we've reached the point where we should talk about the limitations of the scientific method. Because it does have its limits, right? Yeah. Like the way that the scientific method is set up, especially if you go through, if you include falsification, which most scientists now say is a thing. Sure. Like falsifiability of your hypothesis means that you have a real scientific hypothesis there. If it can be disproven by some observation or some measurement or whatever, then it's falsifiable. And if it's not falsifiable, then it's not really science. So the thing is, force something to be falsifiable.

57:44Chuck Bryant:And it was actually a philosopher that came up with the concept of falsification, a guy named Karl Popper in the 1930s. Yeah. And he was the one that said, like, you have to be able to falsify something for it to be disproven or supported. Right. And if not, then it's pseudoscience. Right. Well, part and parcel of that is that what you're saying has to be able to be detected empirically. There's some way that the presence of it has to be measured or inferred. Right. And so a lot of people say, well, then with the scientific method, it reaches the limits of its current usefulness when it tries to explain the supernatural.

58:22Chuck Bryant:Right. When somebody says like— Ghosts are real. Exactly. You can't prove that. Well, you also can't disprove it either. Right. Right? And so if you are a scientist who says because the scientific method can't prove or disprove the existence of ghosts or God, there is no such thing as ghosts or God, you're making a leap of faith just as much as the same person who says science can't prove or disprove the existence of ghosts or God. Therefore, gods and ghosts are real. Right. They're both leaps of faith. And that really the most scientific approach to the existence of the supernatural, whether it is a ghost or God, is that we simply don't know.

59:07Chuck Bryant:And that we cannot know scientifically. But that doesn't mean that it does exist or doesn't exist. Right. And that saying that science shows that it does or doesn't exist is by definition the opposite of what science shows. Yeah. Science shows neither. It's not capable of showing or showing that something doesn't exist. Yeah. That's a good point. the other place where science can get corrupted is when it blurs the lines or when people blur the lines between moral judgments and science value judgments like you can study global warming you can study cause and effect you can report data but when you make that secondly to say and this is a scientist I mean someone can come along and say global warming is bad shouldn't drive your SUV that's fine but a scientist can't do a study and say that because that's a value judgment and that's where science can get corrupted pretty much.

1:00:06You can study global warming and results until the cows come home, but you can't assert that if you use this light bulb, you're a bad person.

1:00:15Chuck Bryant:Right, or ocean acidification is bad. It's not good for humans, but if you're a jellyfish, it's awesome. Right. So yes, again, you made a great point. It's not science. It's people using science to make value judgments. So ultimately, the scientific method, although it does have its limitations in that it needs empirical data to prove or disprove something, it's not flawed. That's not a flaw. That's a limitation. Yeah. And it's when it's misused, then its results become flawed or skewed. And that's the people doing it, man, not science. That's right. It's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah. Man, this is a good one.

1:00:59Chuck Bryant:I thought so too, man. Way to start out with a bang. Boom. It's all downhill from here. If you want to know more about the scientific method, check out that article on The Economist. Check out Explorables. And then, of course, check out the scientific method in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. That's right. But quickly, before listener mail, we get asked by listeners all the time, what can we do? Since you have a free podcast, we can't pay for it. What can we do to help you guys? Yeah. And one thing you can do that we would appreciate is go to iTunes and leave a rating and a review for us.

1:01:41Yeah. That makes a big, big difference in keeping us up there in the rankings, which means more people find stuff you should know. after they listen to Serial, they'll just say, well, geez, there's other podcasts in the world? What is this podcast? So ratings and reviews really help us out, and it doesn't cost you anything but a few minutes. Be honest. We're not saying go leave us some great review, but go leave us a great review. You said it. And tell one person about stuff you should know. We would appreciate that, too. Turn somebody on to the show, and that's it. That's our version of a pledge drive.

1:02:18Wow. We do that, what, once every three years now? Yeah, not very obnoxious.

1:02:23Chuck Bryant:And it lasts 40 seconds. All right, so on to listener mail. This is from my sister-in-law, actually. Oh, yeah, this is some nepotism. Yeah, Jenny Bryant. She mentioned in the homeschool episode, homeschooled her kids for a little while. And she sort of corrected me. Love the homeschooling episode, guys. One very big trend these days in the homeschooling community is what Abby, my niece, does, which is hybrid homeschooling. So two to three days a week she is at school, and then the rest of the time she's at home. She's a plant. She's not a plant. The rest of the time she's at home. So she says it's a great option with curriculum provided and new topics taught at school and then worked out at home.

1:03:06Many of these schools are accredited making getting into college, including Ivy League schools, hassle-free. Nice. And Abbey School has sports teams, homecoming. Abbey's actually an excellent volleyball player. Yeah. Beta Club, newspaper staff, all the good stuff. The flexibility is great for families, and we are huge fans of how the hybrid approach prepares students for college by allowing them time outside of class to manage their work and life schedules. So that's from Jenny. Nice. Thanks, Jenny. Via text. Oh, really? Our first listener mail via text.

1:03:38Chuck Bryant:How did you print that out? Did you retype it and print it? No, dude. Are you serious? You can print from text? No, you just copy-paste it to an email. Oh, yeah, yeah. Forgot about that method. How in the world did you print a text? Did you do that with your thoughts? I have a niece who is excellent at volleyball, too. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we should get them together. I don't know, 10, 11, 12, something like that. Abby just turned 13, so they're... Oh, maybe they face off against one another. Yeah. Is she in Atlanta? Yeah, she's up in Canton. You never know. Where's Abby? She's in Roswell, but I think with volleyball, they kind of have play all over the state.

1:04:17Chuck Bryant:Wouldn't that be bizarre if they play each other? Yeah, we'll just see each other at a match one day on opposite sides of the court with our arms folded. What else? I got nothing else. Well, like Chuck said, go leave us a review. And if you want to get in touch with us, You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know. You can email us. Do we still do that? Yeah, you can't text me. StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com.

1:04:56For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

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