So are you saying it's wrong to have initial suspicions about the natural world that compel us to undertake an experiment? The hypothesis is an important step in the scientific method because for the prediction we have to reword it so that it can be demonstrated to objectively match or not match with experimental data.
When you hypothesize first and then design your experiment around that hypothesis, you are creating bias against all other possibilities.
The Scientific Method doesn't have you prove what's true. It has you attempting to prove your hypothesis true.
When you do not form a hypothesis, your conclusions do not have any explanatory power.
Let's try this again Tom, there is a subtle difference.
You first design your experiment around your question. Your hypothesis is why you think your question has a specific answer. This allows to you to isolate specific parameters within your question, and then test against them. The scientific community doesn't care if your hypothesis is wrong, it only cares that your methods are thorough and repeatable and that your conclusions are solidly backed by data and explanation. You can't just say what happened in your conclusions, you have to explain why, which is the purpose of having a very specific, testable hypothesis. That's the purpose and why it has to be well researched before you can formulate it. Once again, you're missing a very important concept: without a hypothesis, all you can say about your experiment is that there is some numerical relationship with whatever variable/s it is you are testing. Repeat -- correlation does not equate to causation.
Referring back to my experiment about using reactants to form products: If I hypothesize that adding the two compounds will create compound Z for whatever reasons, and something else, compound K is created instead, there isn't a chance in hell that I can prove my hypothesis is correct, because adding the two compounds in any sort of fashion will still create a specific reactant. All my hypothesis did was try to explain why those two compounds should create something else, and what it would be. It works as a basis to make sure that my question is not too general. If it was too general, then you would have to design an experiment with more focus, so that you could safely test the validity of your hypothesis without other factors mucking things up.
The experiment addressed a simple question, what happens when I combine compound x with compound y. My hypothesis predicted the outcome, in addition to explaining why that outcome was expected. Calculations exist alongside your hypothesis so that you can make even more specific, quantitative predictions. Even if it did what I more or less expected it to, but it did not quite have the correct energy release or product proportions than I expected, I would have to redesign a test to figure out why it didn't behave as expected, or show that such variance is expected under experimental error using more calculations.
As an example I'll use Ichi's famous plant torture experiments.
He didn't even get the term experiment right, because he has no idea why moonlight 'hurts' plant tissues. He said that moonlight would harm plants, so he could technically look for results that support that (which he did by not explaining how moonlight interacts with the coechlima(sp?) cells specifically). Anyway, that's not a hypothesis, that's just a flat-out guess because it's too vague to have any sort of interpretation of the results. Had he said that some specific property of moonlight will affect a plant via some process that causes X type of cell damage, then that would be a decent falsifiable hypothesis because you could link your outcome to something very specific. But as it stands, moonlight is harmful because it makes cells grow that are 'metabolically intensive' for the plant. Versus cell damage or something that could be remotely interpreted as actual damage or harm. He may as well have said that drinking milk is harmful because it boosts bone growth, which is an indicator that your body needs more structural support.
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I find it particularly striking that not a single FE'r has given any sort of descriptive definition of Zeteticism. Exactly what is their methodology and how is it superior than the scientific method, given that FE'rs have yet to produce any sort of equations or predictive models -- especially models that explain phenomenon that 'RET' cannot explain itself? How can something that is so void of bias or corruption be true when FE'rs have disagreeing viewpoints about literally everything except the flatness of the earth (IE, not even a consensus on the basic geographical layout of the earth)? And how does conspiracy fit into Zeteticism? Anyone care to address these seriously problematic issues?