Yes, you can write to
this person. Tell him AV1611VET said, "Thanks for exposing the Scientific Method as a sham."
AV, I think you should moderate your tone on this topic. Considering you do not see technically interested in understanding how science is done, I don't think you should go around calling the Scientific Method a "sham".
First off: The "Scientific Method" is really just a great "framework", not a recipe for how to analyze data. Further, when you look at the author's "Improved Formula" you see this:
[SIZE=+1]A SCIENTIFIC MYSTERY-[/SIZE]SOLVING STRATEGY Question: You begin with a puzzle, a mystery, a surprising event: You don't understand a phenomenon which has occurred, or which occurs regularly.
Hypothesis: Try to imagine a process or situation which meets this criterion: If what you've imagined were really the case, the puzzling phenomenon would make sense.
Testing: Find out if the hypothesis itself makes sense, by exploring its other consequences: If it were correct, what else should be observed? What would show that the hypothesis is wrong?
Evaluation: Decide whether the results of testing warrant accepting the hypothesis as a plausible explanation for the phenomenon. Consider the possibility of further testing, and whether other hypotheses might provide a better explanation.
Now, this looks reasonable (except he does seem to skip over a bit of the "experiments" most scientists like to undertake).
But initially he establishes the "Scientific Method" as:
Scientific knowledge comes from testing theories by logically deducing hypotheses from them, using experiment and careful observation to test the hypotheses, and revising theories that lead to incorrect predictions.
Actually the "Improved formula" he recommends looks more like the classic scientific method than what he posts as an example of the actual scientific method.
Is this a Strawman argument? I can't really tell.
He later states:
1. The most obvious failing of the "method" as a guide to furthering (or understanding) scientific progress is that it ignores or distorts the role of careful observation as a source of knowledge. Some versions omit mention of observation entirely,
You know, I can't think of
any example of the scientific method I've ever read or heard of or been taught that says this.
So perhaps the author is simply wrong.
Then he states:
The magic "method" implies that scientific progress is impossible without a theory to test.
That sounds completely wrong. Certainly by many examples of real science throughout history. "Theoretical frameworks" are indeed used to understand things, but they are not "gospel" and adhered to without question.
In fact scientific revolutions happen all the time as tests go on at the edges of the known. That's why we have Relativity now as opposed to Classical mechanics, why we have Quantum theory as opposed to the simple planetary model of atoms.
Science grows for reasons that the author has apparently missed completely in his misrepresentation of how the "H-D" scientific method works.
This reaks of strawman logic. That, unlike scientific reasoning, is a sham.
4. The relationships among theories, hypotheses, evidence, surprise, and opportunities for learning is far more complex than the magical method implies.
THIS is actually quite true. The "Scientific Method" is little more than a framework, it gives us some ground rules but it doesn't amount to a step-by-step recipe. Science is really quite complex and involves all aspects of human learning and epistemology. It is when we leverage observation to construct testable hypotheses that we get far more formalistic about how things are done.
Don't call it a "sham". Call it a reasonable framework document to get the ball rolling.
If you have trouble with this, believe me you won't be able to handle it when
real formalisms raise their head like falsifiability and statistical hypothesis testing.
It's not unlike the logic requisite to understand legal topics, but in many ways it is far more open to what is allowed in as evidence but far, far more strict in its treatment of evidence.