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Funny out one small stop becomes the best part of the day Start your summer rhythm with Starbucks. Try the new tropical butterfly Refresher from Starbucks Eczema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with EGLS. A once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about four incent people taking EpGLS achieved itch relief and glare or almost glare skin at sixteen weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBlS Libap LBKZ a two hundred fifty milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children twelve years of age and older who weigh at least eighty eight pounds or forty kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGlS can be used with or without topical corticoosteroids.on't use if you're allergic to EBGlIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe, eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems, you should notceive a live vaccine when treat with ecLlS Before starting Eliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection Ask your doctor about EBglS and visit Evglus. liillily d. com or call one in hundred Lillily RX or one in hundred five four five five nine seven nine. Hey everybody, Chuck here. contininuing our journey down the science trail. Here we are with I believe episode seven on the list how the scientific method works Welcome to Stuff You should Know from Haststuffworks. com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. stuff you should know, M grinning. It's been a while I dont know Funny L like those words come pouring out of my mouth ool You wake up in the middle of night saying that and you me like slugs you in the face, right? She's like to sleep. She has to dry my brow. Yes, we pre recorded some for December, as we like to do to take a little time off at the end of the year and not explain things for a few weeks in our real lives. It's nice. Like people ask me things like what happened to that stick of butter? Yeah, I don't know. Don't ask. Don't even ask me. I could tell you. Yeah, but I'm not gonna. Exactly. That's how it goes in my house Find your own butter All right December was find your own buttermth. Yeah That's a good that's a good one. That should be a t shirt for. stuff you should know. find your own butter. Decemberers find your own butter month. Yeah,'s right. Maybe a stick of butter or some garland on it. Yeah. I like that. So it's good to see you again, man. Good to be back in here. Yeah, it is nice to be back As much as the break was great, I'm happy to be explaining things again. Well, that's good because if we got in here and you're like, I can't do this, I can't do it again, we'd be in trouble. Yeah. yeah. So I'm glad we're all feeling good. Jerry, you feeling good Jerry's got two thumbs up and a big goofy smile. Two of her three thumbs She looks like Bob from that male enhancement pill ad. Oh he the guy, the old man that's like super buuff I would call him O' middle aged. He looked like kind of a Bob Dobbs typey dude. I think that's kind of who he was modeled. Is see the guy that's super muscly now I'm thinking of someone different, I think. You're thinking of Jack Lane? No, no, no, no. Just there's some ad. There's some old man that looks like really creepy because from the next super like buff? He looks like a twenty five year old. No, remember there was like a male enhancement pill and I'm making air quotes here for erectile dysfunction. well, there go the air quotes. But yes. and it was like in the Early two thousands, I think Maybe late nineties, but I think early two thousands and these ads were everywhere and there was Bob and like all these great things happened to him because he started taking this pill. I can't remember the name of the pill But the company got into a lot of trouble because it was basically like a subscription service. And like you gave them your credit card and you got this free trial, but then they started sending it to you and it was like next to impossible to cut off service Interesting. They were like, no, we want your malenness to be enhanced So youve su these ads. Yeah I was going to start asking questions, but willube I will find it on YouTube. I'll be like, Oh, Bob. Yeah, you will. You will go Oh, and we'll have to come back in and record an insert. Right. The guy that's on in the back of all those pill bottles in my bathroom. So Chuck. Yes. I don't even remember how we got. Oh yeah, Jerry did that. It was Jerry's fault. But you remember we did the Enlightenment episode Okay We talked a lot about how There's this kind of u Tug of war over. the human Psyche sure betweenet rationalism and mysticism, I guess you could you could put it. Yeah. Well, I feel like we're talking today about the scientific method. Yeah, great idea, by the way. Thank you very much.udos. It's been a long time coming. Yeah U because I realize like I don't understand it as fully as I don't understand science. I understand the scientific method because it's pretty cut and drary and beautiful and elegant and simple. But then you just take this thing And it came out of the birth of rationalism. Yeah. And when you place it into the world and make it function There's a lot of implications Yeah. Is it being used properly? Is it being used responsibly? Like are we putting what constitutes faith into that? you know? it just raises all this other stuff. And it made me realize like I don't understand science as much as I want to. So researching this, it was awesome Yeah, and this is a cool episode, I think, because not only are we going to talk about the scientific method, but we're going to talk about Just science, like what is science in general? and some of the rock stars along the way to really, you know laid out the path remarkably in like many, many years agoight like coming up with these amazing discoveries that still like hold you know, you can like hold their feet to the fire for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, because if you come upon a Universal truth Yeah. You know, it is what it is. like you got to be the person who discovered it because you know, you saw it realized it a certain way, but ultimately it was there already. Yeah, like Newton. I mean, we'll talk about all this stuff, but it's not like now we're like, oh, Newton Most of what he said was wrong, but that's understandable because it was a long time ago. Like his stuff holds up Yeah really, really well. I was wondering if he on his deathbed was just like, oh man, I contributed so much to humanity. It's mind boggling. But I couldn't enhance my maailhood. Well, Bob hadn't come along yet So Chck let's just quit stalling and talk about science. Like what is science? Well, I hate the old elementary school defined as But it's a pretty good place to start here to get a base definition of science. Yeah, old William Harris did a great job with this. Yes. William Harris did a great job on. Yeah, he did. Science, the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation in experimentation Boom, end of podcast U So the first part of that is science is practical And it is you know, they make a good he makes Bill Harris makes a great point in here. It's not just stuff you do in a lab and it's not just for scientists. It is all about being hands on and active and it's all about discovery and asking questions about I mean, that's how everything is ultimately solved is by someone looking at something and having a question about it. Exactly. And then the scientific method comes in when you say, and this is how you get to the answer. Eactly. And he makes another good point too that the idea that there is a method, a scientific method makes it seem like it's It's secreted away the fraternity of scientists And like you said, anybody can use it. It's just kind of part of being a curious human.'s not even anyone can use it. everyveryone does use it. Nice. You just might not even know that you're using it. Like if you I mean, one of the examples they use later is if like your car overheats.. When you figure it out why and fix it, that's the scientific method. Right Playing out. Exactly based on reasoning Okay, and deduction and induction. Right man There's so much to talk about. Okay, so let's talk about that definition that you had. So The first part is is that science it's a practical activity. So science is practical, right? Yeah? It's it's this u The basis of the whole thing is discovery You see something, you see birds in flight? And you say, where are those birds going And if you just went and laay down on the ground and went to sleep after that, then youre you're not carrying out science. But if you went I want to find out where those birds are going and you follow them and you start taking notes, that is the basis of science. It's discovery. Yeah, and that's the observational part as well Sometimes you're using a microscope or a telescope, sometometimes you're using your eyeballs No matter what your tool is you're going to be watching something and recording what's called data or data, depending on kind of person you are Yeah What do you say I think I say both I think I think data data. Yeah I don't think I I don't think I say data. Data. I say data. data. Yeah. All right. We'll go with data. You say both I feel like it just comes out of my mouth one way or the other and I don't really think about it. I think that's like being ambidextrouous. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a data datist Yeah. Uh So once you are observing this data, well, there are a couple of kinds. There's quantitative data. which are numbers. you know, your body temperature is ninety eight point six, although I think that' changed slightly,n't Yeah Yeah, they used to be like if you were a human being, your body temperature is ninety eight point six and they realize like, no, it's a little more variation than that. Yeah. But any kind of just numerical representation is quantitative whereas qualitative is behavioral. Like I'm going to watch that bird eat and poop for the next week Right, or what happens if what will the slug do if I put a bunch of salt on it? Don't you know? Don't do that. No, you really should not do that. No, that's awful. But the reaction of the slug is gathering qualitative data. and depending on who you talk to, There isn't qualitative data and science that it should all just be quantitative because ye because quantitative data is reproducible. Qualitative data is It's not necessarily reproducible. You can observe the same phenomenon but you're not necessarily controlling it Okay. I guess I get that, but I agree with Bill here in that they are both They go hand in hand. Yeah, and neither one is more important than the other. You need to have both. Well, a lot of people do, and we'll talk more about it later because without the idea that qualitative data is acceptable and scientific, you don't have the social sciences, like they don't exist. Yeah, that's a good point. know But yes quantitative data and qualitative data. I agree with you. They're both. useful. Okay. U it is an intellectual pursuit So you can make observations on data all day long But until you bring reason, in this case inductive reasoning, which is divving a generalization based on your observations then It's just data sitting there on a piece of paper. L it's supposed to lead you somewhere Right, exactly. And so we should talk about inductive and deductive reasoning. And depending again, it's really weird. One of the things I came across is that there's not A universal agreement on how science is carried out Like I've saw some places where there wass like, there's no place for inductive reasoning in science then other places are saying Well, you have to have science using inductive reasoning. Everybody seems to agree that Deductive reasoning is the basis of science but that you also have to have inductive. So deductive is basically taking broad generalization. Yeah and saying that it applies to something specific, moreore specific. Yeahes. ye inductive is the opposite where you say I've noticed these different data points Yeah. and That means that This broad generalization is true You go from specific observations to a broad generalization. And the reason that a lot of people say, well, inductive reasoning doesn't have any place in science is because you're saying Those birds over there are all brown. Therefore, all birds of that type are brown. Even though I haven't seen every single bird of that type in the world,. I'm saying that all those birds are brown. And a lot of people say, there's no place for that in science Well, if you want to go out and prove that then, that's your business, you know You can't just say that and be like, and I'm done. Right, exactly. I guess you could, but you be much of a scientist. Right. But you can use it to formulate hypotheses. Sure. right. So you can say, I've generated all these data points. I'm going to put them together and see if broad generalization is right. So there is a place for inductive reasoning science, but everybody says, Deductive reasoning is the basis of science Well, Bill Harris does He offers a great example for inductive reasoning with Edwin Hubble of the Hubble Telescope he was looking through the Hooker telescope, which att the time at California's Mount Wilson. Is that the one from Rebel withithout a cause? No that's Griffith Park Observatory which has been redesigned in is really cool now. Yeah, I mean, it was kind of cool before, but it was definitely like sort of the Sace Museum the time forgot. Oh, really? So they've updated it. I bet that was cool though in its own way. Yeah, it was neat. I used to live near there, so it was kind of. But that's like the famous one at least in the movies. Yeah. it's where they have the big knife fight There's this James Dean' statue there too. Oh, I didn't like a bust. Um So yes, Edwin Hobble. He's at Mountain Wilson, and he's looking through the hooker telescope which was the biggest one and At the time, everyone said the Milky Way galaxy is it. That's what we've got going on. Yeah, did you know this Uh yeah, I knew that. Be we're talking nineteen nineteen. Yeah, not that long ago. didid not realize this. And he started looking through this telescope and said, you know what, these neebula that everyone says they're part of our galaxy look to me like they're beyond our galaxy. And not only that, they look like they're moving away from us So he made this through inductive reasoning made this observation You know what I think there are many, many galaxies out there And not only that, I think they are expanding. Yeah and through technological advancement with telescopes over the years, scientists you know, it proved to be true Yeah Pretty cool. So this is a really good example of him saying Like I've made some observations And now I'm going to say this broad generalization. Yeah, right. So these These galaxies appear to be moving away from another. So the whole universe Yeah is expanding, right? That's inductive reasoning. Yeah, it's a pretty brave thing Eespecially back then because you're really putting your reputation at stake. It really is, you know. So what Hubble was what Hubble did was what we've come to see as science. He made some observations. He came up with a hypothesis and then it was tested later on. It's not you don't necessarily As a scientist, you're part of a larger collective of scientists. Yes, right. And every scientist needs one another. That's why there's journals and conferences and things like that to share information, right Yeah And party. and a party. And Hubble came up with his own observations and rather than just experimenting, experimenting, experimenting himself which I'm sure he continued to do. He created this basis of work that he probably realized is going to survive him. Yeah yeah. right? And then later on, scientists came down the road and they tested his hypothesis and they found it was correct And so his hypothesis became a theory. It eventually became part of the basis of the Big Bang theory that the universe started as a huge explosion and it's expanding still because because it exploded at one point, right? Yeah And they did that by carrying out other test or experiments. Exactly. Yeah. So this is how science works. Like some guy back in nineteen nineteen makes some observations in California. In nineteen twenty five he proposes this big broad generalization and over the next like ensuing half a century M and more scientists all around the world start testing his hypothesis and find it to be true. so it becomes a theory. Yeah Well, let's finish up here with science. Okay. The last part of the definition is that it's systematic and it's methodical And it requires testing and experiments and it requires those experiments and tests. to be repeated and verified And it is it's a system, it's a way of working things out It's a way of working. that is the scientific method basically. Yeah. You have your idea Pose a question you theorize a hy or you put a hypothesis out there And then you go about trying to either prove it or disprove it Yeah, exactly. And then the way that you go about proving or disproving it, that's the scientific method. Everything else is just scientific inquiry. The way you go about the standardized way of going about scientific inquiry is the scientific method. And we friend we' talk about the scientific method right after this Hey everybody, I'm Bobby Bones. Today we're talking about Thomas Redt and the soundtrack to Life Tour. For over a decade, Thomas Redt has delivered more than twenty number one hits and sold out tours. Inspired by his family and his Nashville roots, he's created songs that have become the soundtrack to our lives. fromrom Dia happy Man to lifeife Changes. You've heard his songs playing at life' special moments. Now it's time to hear them live Round up your friends to catch Thomas Rhett on the soundtrack to Life Tour Get your tickets now at live nation. com. Why is it always chaos when we link up? Becauseuse nobody plants anything, bro. Good thing the roue's ready like that. For real, rain, dirt, whatever. Available all wheel drive, five modes we still outside. And they got some kick too. That turbo? Torque is crazy. The most in its class, it moves, moves. Rogue doesn't mess around and peep the space Merch on merch, gear, mics, all the fits. Load up we out! twenty twenty six Nissan Rogue built for all of it. Auto Pacific segmentation, twenty twenty six roogue versus latest in market competitors in the XSUV mainstream midsightize class, excluding electrical vehicles based on manufactured websites. I never realized how many of my skills could earn extra income until I joined Air Tasker Last week, I helped a new mom set up her home office. Yesterday, I decorated a family's backyard for a birthday party. Tomorrow, walking in neighbors five poodles. Yeah, five. With AirTasker, you choose the tasks you want to do, name your price, and get paid securely through the platform. It's flexible, rewarding, and a great way to make life work on your terms. Download the AirTasker app or go to airtasker dot com Air Tasker. Get anything done All right, you brought up a point, I think we should go ahead get right to, my friend. Let's do it. Hypotheses and theories One thing tough to say together. know. You did it. One thing that really Chaf' my hide is when you hear poopooers of whatever scientific theory say, well, it's just a theory. Yeah. And you where was this thing that you found P that Do you remember what website that was No. Although I do want to give a shout out now that you mentioned it to exxplorables. 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, you start clicking on the embedded links and you end up like undernderstanding all sorts of stuff. 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 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. Like I got a theory that Jerry and her one hour bathroom breaks every day is really playing words with friends up in the lobby I think your theory is correct. So that's a theory in the colloquial meaning. Right. As far as science goes Theory is not just something thing you postulate S this may or may not be true The theory is beyond the hypothesis And it's something that is strongly supported in many different ways. and all there's all kinds of evidence support something that eventually becomes a theory. Right. What your theory about Jerry's bathroom breaks? Yeah. in the scientific world would be a hypothesis. What? Fact Yeah. 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. whereere 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 friendriends.ure. 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? Yeahed Knowledge, observation and logic. 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. Yeah five different times And you told me about it. 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 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. Yeah. 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. It's a great example, as it turns out Uh I guess the point here is when you hear someone say and an argument, well, that's just a theory. Just punch him in the head and then tell him what we just said about the bathroom breaks. Yeah. And they'll say, Wh who's Jerry? Or just just queue up that whole bit and stand outside of their window wearing a trench coat and holding a boombox over your head with the smug look on your face Uh All right, so should we go back in the old way backack machine a little bit and just talk a little bit about how the scientific method came to be Yes This thing, what are you running this on these days? What do you mean? It's a straight kerosene? The fumes in here are killing me. Sorry about that. trying to go green, you know? Kerosene is not green Diesel maybe. I'm choking. Biodiesel. how about that? Okay. The wayayback machine will run on French fry grease. That would be fine. Right. I'll get to work on that. I could handle this So you tease us with the Rennaissance and the reason the Renaissance was so awwesome and necessary. it was because of Something else we've talked about, which was the Dark ages uh, when Which remember, that's a rationalists araging term for this era. That's right U But I think sort of rightfully so. because Right before the Dark Ages until about a century after, there was not much advancement at all. in the realm of scientific advancement No, it'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 was 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. justust sort of flying under the European radar at the time because some say the Catholic Church science under its thumb for a while. Yeah And's a pretty big threat said, you know, you can't do this stuff, you can't experiment like this and don't ask these questions R. Bea here are your answers. Yeah. But eventually the Rennaissance came about in the twelfth century and people woke up and saw some of the work in the Islamic world and said, you know what? mayaybe 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, you know 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. Yeah, I think the Greek knowledge was complete vished Yes. someow Somehow they got 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, like 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. L 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. R. We're used to just believing everything without questioning it. Yeah. 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, Rogj Bacon. The Bacon brothers. Yeah. He Francis and Roger. Right. Well, they weren't brothers though. But were they related at all? You know, I look that up and I don't think people know either way. I 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 reled. And I mean, they were separated by three hundred or so years. Although Roger was was a monk, so he would not have had children So if they were it's an excellent point. It wasn't necessarily through his line. Gotcha, you know. Yeah 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. that doesn't Aristotle iss not automatically right. And this was a huge advancement Yeah, and Albertus Magnus was the one, I believe who said you know, this thing called revealed trruth, 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. Right. And we mentioned in the Enlightenment episode as well about scholasticism about using scientific inquiry to explain theology. R, which was You know, 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, huge breakthrough. Yeah Uh Francis Bacon, the other Bacon brother. He's one of the heroes of the story. Yeah, he was an attorney and philosopher and and possibly Shakespeare. Oh, really?h I never heard that. Oh yeah Interesting So What do you mean? like wrote those under the pseudonym? Yeah The Shakespeare sister was the other theory too, right? That it was a woman I've heard that, yeah. and she couldn't like, you know, women couldn't be the playwright, so that's her dumb brother, William. That's a good credit. Oh was it her brother I think that was one of the theories That was a good Smith song too U Shakespeare' sister? was that the name of? Yeah Wn't it a band to I think it won What was it, maybe U so anyway, he was a philosopher and a lawyer and he said, you know what The Baconian method basically became the scientific method. Yeah. He was the first dude who really said this is the steps that you should take to u investigate science. Right. There has to be a framework. And the whole point of this that we take this so for granted now because it's so intuitively and on its face. Right Yeah, as far as scientific inquiry goes, but this is an enormous breakthrough to say follow this step, 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 anytim. Yeah will be able to carry out the same experiment And we'll be able to verify or disprove it 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 going to do. I'm going to give it a name, I'm going to spell it out and from now on, you can call me the dad of the scientific myh Yeah, and that's why Newton was such a rock star because he's so rigorously stuck to the scientific method. that all these centuries later has Uh, you know, his systems of laws are they have stood the test of time. Yeah. 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 Right It's not working in a vacuum It' sharing your ideas and working with one another and the whole little sidebar here on South area, I thought was pretty cool. which was when science quit quit but started looking at small things instead of looking at the universe around them and at the stars and said basically you know, through the advancements of lens grinding Antonio Van Liebenhok specifically a Dutch tradesman was pretty good at making simple microscopes And all of a sudden, contemporaries like Robert Hook said, you know what? let's lookingoo at tiny things. Be therein might lie the answer to many, many things. Yeah. and they're right. Robert Hook found cork or he discovered cells by looking at cork Yeah. through an early microscope. So In this story, science is hastened by technological advancement. lens grinding. Yeah, it to make microscopes. And then this new technology is used to further science, right? Yeah, it's like mutual inspiration between Levven Hook and leaving Hoook. Yeah, it was neat because hook heard about Leaving hooks. microscopes Yeah, got his hands on one or a microscope, looked at him like a cork and said, o, there's such a thing as cells. R Leven Hook said, Oh, that's pretty neat. let me try. And he said, Oh, there's such a thing as ote little animals. whichich we call protozo and bacteria. Yeah. And one of the Royal Societies after Levin Hook presented his findings, turned back to Hook and said, Hey, Hook, we know you're pretty handy with the microscope.. C confirm Leavving Hook's findings? Are there little animals? Hook said There are indeed. I can see them with my microscope. That's right. And that inspired a German botanist named Matias Schleiden U to look at a lot of plants and he was The first guy to say, you know what? pllants are composed of cells and he's having dinner one night with his zoologist buddy. Yeah, this is about a one hundred years later. Yeah. Theodore Schran. and said, you know what, dude, Order the wine and order the steak Trust me, because this place is fantastic And u 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. Yeah. 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.u But laid the further foundation, right? 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 twenty years later, Rudolph Virchal said You know what? notot only is everything made of living cells but they all come from preree existing cells which was a huge deal at the time because peopleople believed in spontaneous generation. Yeah at the time. Like if you left some wheat seed and 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 L 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. But that's the obvious explanation. And if you think about it, they're working from Ocham's Razor And Ocam's Razor says the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Yeah All other things given. Well, the thing is spontaneous generation has never been shown to be s Right. If We've got the cell thing over here, let's investigate that. Yeah. So this what was the guy's name Virtal Yes. He's saying, okay, well wait a minute, I've got this this cell theory I'm working on that's been around for a couple of decades. Cell hypothesis probably. A cell hypothesis at the nice catch. Don't feel bad though, because this article that you sent said that scientists today like still confuse those terms. Yeah J colloquially. And the House of Works article makes a good point in saying that science and everything that has to do with it is in the scientific method is very fluid Yeah and open to interpretation and experimentation. Yeah, obviously. But so he says, okay, this cell hypothesis, this is a pretty good explanation for what we now call spontaneous generation He didn't do anything about it. He just put it out there And then along comes Louis Pasteure, 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 U put equal amounts in two different beakers One had a straight neck and one had an S shaped neck booiled it just to make sure everything in it was killed and then just let it sit there in the same conditions open. to the world and are open to the room likeike it wasn't corked, in other words No court he noticed that The one with the straight neck eventually became cloudy and discolored. meaning there was some junk growing in there. Yeah. and the one in the S shape neck did not do anything. It remained the same R So led him to think, what Well, he thought that germs that there were such thing as germs, which Le and Hook and Hook had already shown. Yeah Um, and that in the S shape flask They had gotten trapped in the neck in this 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 sppontaneous 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. 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 as science is disproving. Sure. With science, unless you're talking about math, with science, there's no such thing as proof theory, even a law, a universal law still has the potential for being undermined by one single experiment, one single observation.. And therefore there is no real ultimate proof in science. There's just theories and support for theories And then ultimately laws further and further support for laws, Right, right 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. Yeah And that's what Past Drew 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. 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 get the same result. Right But that's not to say that pasture showed that if you do this a million in one times right, that the S shappe flask won't turn cloudy. Yeah. He didn't prove that. You can't prove that, which is again Science. can disprove and lend support So right after this message break, we're gonna get into the actual steps of the scientific method.. Hey everybody, I'm Bobby Bones. Today we're talking about Thomas Red and the soundtrack to lifeife Tour. For over a decade, Thomas Red has delivered more than twenty number one hits and sold out tours. Inspired by his family and his Nashville roots, he's created songs that have become the soundtrack to our lives. From Diia happappy Man to lifeife Changes, You've heard his songs playing at life special moments. 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Awards based on twenty twenty five model year, newer models may be shown Mornings at my house would be impossible without Air Tasker The twoo kids can't find their shoes and the sink decides it's leaking So I posted on Air Tasker to get help with the to do list Next thing I know, the sinks fix and a tasker installs a robot litter box, my cat hates Which means I'm spending less time juggling chores and back to juggling my kids Go to airtasker. com or download the app Air Tasker, G anything done The fishing. All right, dude, I guess At L last, we are there. Like you mentioned before 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 you know list out all the different steps you have to take But generally maybe. ye. I would we should carry those around.? We should make little wallet cards or the scientific method just to carry But stuffy shouldin noo go on it. Oh yeah, I'll make a million bucks I could brand them and sell 'em. 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 U Next, like Darwin was known when we did our podcast on him to You wouldd spend like a week on three square feet. ground his proper It was like even longer than that. remember. rememember it wasn't it? He said that he didn't he wasn't going to mow his lawn for like three years because he wanted to see what what happened. Yeah, so he's the ultimate and qualitative data of just observing writing things down and asking questions. And the reason you ask your question is so you can narrow something down like I think the example they use in here is on Galapagos, like the beaks of what bird was it? Finches? Yeah, the Finch bird. You noticed a bunch of different beaks So he finally posed a question like U you know, I think these beaks are different for a very specific reason. and I aim to find out why Yes He said what caused the diversification of fininches on galapagas? Oh should have done that with an accent Well yeah, he would have had a British accent, huh? Yeah hu unless he was pretending to be someone else I always think of him as like sounding me like Hemingway or something Oh yeah, just 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 says Dude played him who I can't remember right now Ed Norton. No I finally saw Birdman though, did you see that great Mie Um I disagree. you didn't like it? No What Wow. That surpres me Um We'll get into that off here So, u Sorry you just threw me with that. Make an observation. Yes. He's onngalapagos and he's like, what the heck with all these different fint It One small island. Why would there be different species of finch? So ask And why are they all seeming to survive and coexist so well What's what's m Yeah, 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 car body shape. is the best for air resistance. one that shaped like a box or one that' shaped like aerodynamic like a bird. Right And he carries that out and the next step, you formulate your hypothesis based on you're, you know foreknowledge and mayaybe observations like So, you know what? I think that a car shaped like a bird is probably more aerodynamic than one shaped like a box. 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 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 s up. Pizza delivery. drone service. manan. I think where you No Pizza are grilled cheese in New York and you go stand on an X after you order and it like comes and drops it. That is the dumbest thing I've ever. And I can't wait to do it. Oh they're making a lot of money It's pretty funny. Yeahet, 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 that exX. Yeah, exactly Um All right, so your hypothesis, I don't think we ever mention is typically represented as an if then statement. Yeah, if you're doing good science is. Yeah. like if the car profile U Well, the example he's 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 than the car designed like the body of a bird be more aerodynamic than one like a box. So that's inductive reasoning, startarting with a broad statement and going to something narrow And it's if then at the same time. And now you have test. You have a question that can be answered? You can figure out a way to answer it. Yeah, and he points out too, this is pretty important that your hypothesis, if it's formulated correctly, it means it is testable and it's falsifiable which are often one in 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 pseudo science 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. R. 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 Yeah. And you want to everything that's supposed to be identical needs to be identical. So basically you have two variables at least You have an independent variable Yes, 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 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. So you're measuring what happens based on the change that you made That's right And want you want to study one single variable at a time, basically. Yeah, donon't get fancy J just do good science, step by step methodical. You also have to have your control group in any experiment in an experimental group. and then controlled group is what's going to allow you to compare the test results baseline measurement. Yeah, and you need that baseline measurement to like pan outre not just like, Exactly. Like if Pesture had just done the S shappe neck and nothing happened. 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 bird shaped and one box shaped. Right? or the 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 that would be pretty streamlin. 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 be the same weight, they have to be painted the same, the tires, everything, the windows One can't have antenna and the other not They've all they got to be identical other than the one variable. Right. The independent variable that you're that's the one you want different. everythingthing else you want the same or else 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 know, you want to rule out everything else, but that one variable. Yeah. U afterfter that, you want to analyze your data. so you can draw your conclusion. And sometimes it's Kind of straightforward and easy, sometimes takes a lot of work and a lot of various tools Yes out. Let's say you're just blasting a car in a wind tunnel. 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 then the box shaped car, which means that My hypothesis was correct. Right. And here are the data points, whereas Louis Pastur could just say, lookook at the beakers. Exactly. Don't be an idiot. Yeah. I'm a scientist. That one's got gross stuff. You can see it But the other thing about science too, Chuck, ideally is let's say the egg shaped one Ted 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' right. And you would have come up with that littleittle egg shaped Mercedes SUV. Yeah. It was so huge like ten years ago The Mercedes egg into a store near you. So That's a big, big part of the scientific method is carrying out a an experiment contontrolling the variables analyzing the data 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 that It's I mean, here's some of the data he points out is One rule of thumb among biotech venture capitalists is about half fifty percent of publish research can't even be replicated And biotech firm, Amngen found that they could reproduce Only six of their fifty three landmark studies in cancer research, right So you can't repeat these things. It's like Everyone's fighting for dollars in fame. And maybe not fame, but just some more career advancements, sure. such that they're kind of not doing that final step any longer. 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. R. We need another Roger Bacon to come along and be 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 prove something or disprove something that they want a specific result. Like, 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 journal. which this author points out that journals need to start U putting in what he calls uninteresting. results and experiments. Right Or like the stuff that's not sexy. Right, or studies that failed to show that their hypothesis was correct. Yeah, stuff is disproved. Those things still need to well, not even disprove. Well yeah, I guess it is disproved. But yes, like the guy set out to say like the a red balloon uses less helium than a silver balloon. R. And it turns out that no 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 sure U by carrying out the same experiment. whether the results are positive or negative or what, the study is meant to be shared. And that's the point of the scientific method 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 fourteen percent of published papers are quote negative results And it used to be like thirty percent or more And he says because it's a lot of it has to do with this sort of u You know getting in these journals and you're the Rock Star scientist. and this study is super sexy.. Like if 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 today. I know. 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 So yeah, science needs to kind of reevaluate the way it's carrying out science. It's not science, the problem It 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 seven million researchers And back in the day, even in like the nineteen fifties, there were like a few thousand maybe 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. Y You want the bigger paycheck or the famer notoriety and All of a sudden science is not science. Yeah. you know. It's pseudo science Exactly 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. like falsifiability of your hypothesis means that you have a real scientific hypothesis there. 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 for something to be falsifiable. and it was actually a philosopher that came up with the concept of falsification. a guy named Carl Popper in the nineteen thirties. Yeah. And he was the one that said like You have to be able to falsify something for it to be disproven or supported.. And if not, then it's pseudos science, right Part and parcel of that is that what you're saying has to be able to be detected empirically There's some way that has to the presence of it has to be measured or inferred. R. 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. R When somebody says like ghosts are real. Exactly 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. Yeah, 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 go surreal, right They're both leaps of faith. And that really the most scientific approach to the existence of the supernatural, whether it is ghost or God is that we simply don't know and that we cannot know scientifically But that doesn't mean that it does exist or doesn't exist. Right. And that's 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