Understanding the Scientific Method Part2
When scientists use the scientific method they are often testing something experimental against something controlled. For example, a group of doctors may want to know the effects of a new drug on their patients. They often give one set of patients the new drug, and to another group, they give a placebo. A placebo is a “fake” manipulated variable that is given as a means to control all variables other than the manipulated variable. Sugar pills are often given as placebos since we understand how a tiny bit of sugar will effect a patient. The group that gets the drug is the experimental group and the group that gets the placebo is the control group. But why give the control group anything at all? A placebo is given to the control group in order to control all variables except one (the manipulated variable). If one group is getting a drug then the other group should get something too in order to be consistent with the scientific method of controlling all variables except the manipulated variable.
There is however, an interesting complication known as the placebo effect when humans and intelligent animals like other primates are the subjects studied. In some cases doctors gave a sugar pill (no drug affect) to a group of test patients who were ill and told those patients that they were receiving a new drug that would cure them. A significant number of the patients got better! Scientific investigations show that the patients expectations of being curedrelieved stress on their mind and bodywhich lower the level of harmful chemicals in the body, helping the body to heal itself. The placebo effect has been well studied and ongoing research continues to confirm that it is a real effect. Another important type of test that is done with humans when testing new drugs is to perform a blind test. In a blind test, one group gets the new drug and the other group gets the placebo, but neither group knows which substance they were given: placebo or drug. The purpose of the blind test is to try to foil the placebo effect. Sometimes experiments are done that are double blind. In this case, the doctors who hand out the drug or the placebo don’t know which they are handing out: placebo or drug. This is done to try to prevent the influence of the doctor’s knowledge of who is getting the drug versus who isn’t from influencing what the patient believes he or she is getting: placebo or drug. If the patient knows that the doctor doesn’t know which substance he or she is handing out (placebo or drug) this lessens the placebo effect on the patient.
Scientific method is designed to overcome our bias, or opinion of how Nature works. By controlling all variables except the one we are testing we can learn how that one variable works. It’s a slow process, but accurate. The scientific method is meant to be a tool for separatingobjective(factual) reliable informationfrom oursubjective (personal and often unfounded) biases of how we might think Nature works.
Remember that the way Nature works often goes against our expectations and more often than not challenges our understanding of it. Science only works if scientists are honest in letting the facts they discover lead their research. Scientists must back up their claims with evidence that can be confirmed by their peers. Their results must be repeatable and be able to make successful predictions. In almost all cases new scientific discoveries will continue to support our scientific theories. A theory in science is not a theory in everyday language. We might say we have a theory about something, but it is just our opinion. A scientific theory is not opinion but represents the summary of many experiments that support our best and broadest ideas about how Nature actually works.
Opinions,unless they are well informed are vanquished in the face of scientific theory.