U2 THE METHODS OF SCIENCE

Question 1

What are the 2 areas of scientific activity?

Answer 1

Private (libraries, officies and laboratories) and public area (publishing of results and assesment of collegues)

Question 2

What is Peer-review?

Answer 2

When other scientitst check your work, results and do suggestions before publishing your work

Question 3

Scietific community…

Answer 3

is constantly inmmersed in a cycle for production and consumption of publications and the knowledge obtained is “reflexive” and “retro-acitve”

Question 4

What does the cyle of procution and consumption of publications consist on?

Answer 4

Scientisit should:
- base their studies on previos work by collegues
- read these studies
- do new reserach from their results and publish their own

Question 5

Meritocracy. How do sciensits try to be recognized among their collegues?

Answer 5

• relevence of their inquieries and quesitions proposed
• accuracy of the methodology employed
• precision of the obtained results

Question 6

What does organized skepticisim consist on?

Answer 6

Always putting into quesion the results obtained with out caring whose it is

Question 7

What do you obtain at the end of the proces of organized skepticism?

Answer 7

Public recognition and social consensus

Question 8

Scientific work is

Answer 8

to discriminate between qcceptable and unaccepntable results, falsifications are usually detected immediately

Question 9

What is key when evalutating results?

Answer 9

• Previous knowledge of the subject
• The behaviour of the scientific community

Question 10

What happens to a large part of the information generated?

Answer 10

It is thrown away, specially the one thar is created in the periphery of scientific community

Question 11

Where does data come from and what does it reveal?

Answer 11

Sensorial perception and reveals information about nature

Question 12

What os one of the most important challenges faced by the international scientific community?

Answer 12

The standardizing the units of measurement

Question 13

How can data be obtained?

Answer 13

Through obseravtion and experimentation

Question 14

What does observation consist on?

Answer 14

Maintaning the natural conditions for the event under study

Question 15

“Normal science”

Answer 15

Made up of prevailing paradigms in the field of science

Question 16

“Crisis”

Answer 16

When the paradigm is put into question due to an accumulation of anomalies

Question 17

“Revolution”

Answer 17

The weakening of the paradigm which causes a change in the paradigm and, in the long term, creates a new “normal science”

Question 18

What is science articulated on?

Answer 18

• Forms of social commitment
• Production techniques
• Political management

Question 19

“Paradigm”

Answer 19

Made up of supposed general theories of the laws and the techniques adopted by members of a scientific community

Question 20

What does the paradigm establish?

Answer 20

The rules needed to legitimise scientific works (ej. cell theory, which is the base of other studies

Question 21

What are theories?

Answer 21

Structured totalities, outside which observations make no sense

Question 22

Difference between Popper and theory as structure?

Answer 22

Theories are relativist and discontinious pholosofical models, because their validity depends on the historical and social framework

Question 23

What are the 2 principles of falsifiablity (Karl Popper)?

Answer 23

1. Obseravation is guided by theory
2. Aboslute verification of a law is impossible as it is logically unsustainable to claim to make an infinite amount of observations

Question 24

What do scientific statements need to be in order to be considered scientific?

Answer 24

Statments must necessarily be “falsifiable”

Question 25

Popper proposes that…

Answer 25

1. Theories that do not overcome observational and experimental test should be eliminated and replaced with ones that are more credible
2. Even of we can not confirm that a theory is true, we can ssy that is “best available”

Question 26

What do reaserchers provoke in the inductive method and what to they use it for?

Answer 26

Non spontaneus events to observe them, measure the variables and acquire new knowledge

Question 27

Apart form provoking a non spontaneus event what does the procedure include in the inductive method?

Answer 27

• Formulation of a hypothesis
• Experimentation
• Empirical validation

Question 28

The deductive method (trial and error) creates hypothesis that, one validated, become:

Answer 28

• Types and patterns: joint presentation of natural events
• Laws: relationship between variables
• Theories: systematic explanations that refer to a field of nature and coherently origanuze a set of laws
• Models or representations: simplifications of reality that are considered to be reasonable

Question 29

What is scientific knowledge is “built” form?

Answer 29

Observation and experimentation

Question 30

What does the inductive method postulate?

Answer 30

• Science starts with observation
• Inductive REASONING is objective and valid
• Observation offers a secure foundation for scientific knowledge

Question 31

Inconsistencies of the inductive method?

Answer 31

• Subjectivity of observation which are consitioned by the observers’ expecations
• Impossibility of generalization
• Difficulty in forming observational statments, as they cannot be expressed within existing theories

Question 32

Through what are observational statements expressed?
(ejemplo del ear lobe)

Answer 32

Through the concepts and terms of a theory. (Observations and experimentations are carried out to validate or clarify a theory)

Question 33

Types of scientific instrumnets?

Answer 33

1. passive: measuring observations
2. active: that create new events in the laboratory

Question 34

How do instruments tend to be presented in scientific articles?

Answer 34

As unproblematic tools

Question 35

What are “black boxes”?

Answer 35

Instruments that are not well understood by the scientists who use them

Question 36

What is “tactic knowledge”?

Answer 36

does not appear explicilty in publications and is only acquired through close collboration with there creators

Question 37

Why does “tactic knowledge” become a problem?

Answer 37

It impedes the reproduction of experiments with those who haven’t had prolonged contact with the work-groups

Question 38

The use of scientific instruments imply…

Answer 38

the acceptation of the theories involved in the use of the instruments