Objectives
Class Preparation & Participation We cover three topics in class this week. Post your responses to these questions to the Week 2 Discussion Board on Canvas. Please respond briefly to the four questions associated with Topic 1. After thinking about the 8 thinking skills required for science, think about what your "big question" or "big problem" you want to address. Then go through the exercise of examining how well you can apply the principles listed to your thinking about this issue or problem. Which of the 8 are easiest for you to apply? Which the most difficult? Topic 1: What does it take to think like a scientist? Some Rules for Thinking Like a Scientist About 15 minutes long. Sometimes there is a lengthy ad with this video. If that happens watch until the "Stop ADs" icon appears and then get rid of the ad. As you watch this short video, think about your own scientific thinking skills. Identify three strengths and three areas where you hope this course will improve your scientific thinking skills. I will not ask you to share these with the class, but I do want you to think about what you can gain from the course
Topic 2: Eight ways of thinking required for conducting scientific research
I used to be very concerned about population growth – globally and in the U.S. One day in a moment of clarity, I thought “Why do I think over-population is a problem? Says who? What evidence is there that too many people is a problem?" Then I realized that the supposed evidence was simply that the population was growing. That is an invalid way to reach a valid assumption. You cannot use the existence of the phenomenon you are making an assumption about as evidence that your assumption is valid.
After my moment thinking about the overpopulation assumption, I asked myself "What would happen to human society (and art, and music, and science, and research, and sports…) if the opposite assumption is true – that underpopulation and population decline are the big problems?" That led me to a very different judgment when I realized that underpopulation and declining population in particular leads to some really bad outcomes. Like not enough young, productive people to take care of kids and older people who need help, not enough people to maintain the economy, not as many brilliant artists and scientists…
Changing your mind is a very hard thing to do. For one thing, scientific evidence shows that we tend to remember most the first thing we heard about a specific topic or event or idea. You tend to remember the first thing you hear about an event – especially if it is an emotional event. Many people still believe that numerous assassins were involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination, despite 60 years of intense investigation without ever finding any evidence that more than one gun was involved. And pathways and patterns of thinking grow out of that – biological pathways in the brain. Changing your mind requires changing your brain and that is very hard work. But reaching new conclusions based on new evidence is an absolute requirement of scientific thinking. We see many examples today of people who cannot or will not “change their minds.” What we are observing is the polar opposite of scientific thinking.
Science depends on the accumulation of data that anyone with scientific training could create and use. NO magic powers like ESP or teleportation allowed in scientific thinking. If an idea cannot be tested through the accumulation of data, it is not a part of science. The scientist has to distinguish between his/her personal experiences and ideas and the scientific data that it is our duty to create. That is not to say that listening to beautiful music or using your imagination is not part of learning. Knowledge is not limited to science. But when we are acting as scientists, we have to respect the "rules" of scientific discovery.
You must start the scientific process by putting every possible idea on the table. Our job is to eliminate the “bad” ideas – the ones that make no sense, cannot be tested, have no basis in established scientific theory, do not produce replicable results, or simply fail the logic test. Nonetheless, you must start by thinking very broadly about what ‘might be the real explanation’ for the phenomenon you want to understand.
Scientific data are not based on a single study, but rather on the accumulation of a very large body of data that point to a recurring set of conclusions. You can test the idea in different ways (like conducting an experiment versus conducting an observational study), but no single test will ever convince scientists that something is proven.
Scientists do not try to prove ideas are right. On the contrary we try to prove that our own favorite idea is wrong. Think of it this way. We start with this very large array of possible answers to any scientific question – point 5 above. As scientists, we then start to methodically “throw out the bad ideas,” the ones that do not produce valid, reliable results that are consistent over time, place and condition. In the end, if we are successful, we have a very small pile of “pretty good ideas,” and that is how science advances.
There is nothing more exciting than a study where the data challenge or outright contradict the most current explanations for a given phenomenon. It is exciting because it shows that we are on the trail of new ideas – and it is especially exciting if the idea you are contradicting is your own favorite idea. NOW you have something new to tackle. Science progresses most rapidly when traditionally accepted conclusions are challenged and often discarded. Not so long ago, for example, many scientists argued that the color of one’s skin was an indicator of his/her mental capacity. That conclusion was the result of failure to apply points 1-7 above. It is a perfect example of very bad “science” where a recurring correlation between skin color and academic achievement was treated as proof of cause and effect. That, of course, was a devastatingly wrong and unwarranted conclusion that has cost millions or billions of human beings to suffer. The correlation was an outcome produced by ideology, not a biologically based result of cause-and-effect. We must practice scientific thinking very rigorously. Bad science is dangerous and harmful to all. Exercise 1. Pick any phenomenon of interest to you that is amenable to scientific explanation, preferably something that you know quite a bit about and feel is important to fully understand. This is what I call the “big question,” the question that keeps you curious and leads you from one specific study to another as you try to find the answer. This question can drive the thrust of your research for years. My first “big question,” starting when I worked on my M.S. thesis was: “Can we apply the principles and theories of ecology to the management of agricultural production systems?” Simply put, can we treat farms as ecosystems and use what we have learned in ecology to improve management of these systems? I really and truly wanted to believe that we could use ecology to manage agricultural systems. In fact, I taught a course called agroecologia (it was in Spanish) for 10 years during my early career – trying to answer this question. I spent over a decade answering the question to my own satisfaction. Formulate a “big question” that you have. Then mentally go through those 8 critical components in thinking like a scientist. Your objective is to determine if you can put those requisites of scientific thinking into practice when the subject of the research is one that you feel passionate about. Topic 3: The process of doing scientific research. Read pp. 1-12 in the Gorard Textbook. As a process, scientific research consists of asking and answering a series of questions using specific procedures and following standard practices that help ensure that we reach valid and reliable conclusions. Conclusions are applicable to a range of people, places, or conditions. They differ from results, which are specific to a given study at one time and in one place. Scientists want to reach conclusions, but generating results is one step in the long road from question to conclusion. The goal is to create conclusions that are valid and reliable and that have high explanatory power. Conclusions must be valid – they must be logically consistent and provide evidence that leads the scientist and the people who share expertise about the phenomenon to have confidence that the conclusions are justifiable. They must also be reliable – meaning that we can replicate the processes used to generate the conclusions in other places with other people. We will not necessarily get the same results, but we should find that the results are consistent with the conclusions we have reached. If not, go to Step 8 in Topic 2 – the place where we say “Wow, something really unexpected is at work here.” Finally, the conclusions should add to explanatory power. Above all else, scientific knowledge seeks to explain “how things work,” from social processes to atomic fission to breeding new citrus cultivars that are resistant to citrus greening. Science explains and the more fully a body of knowledge explains a phenomenon, the greater confidence we have in using that knowledge to solve problems. Ultimately, we create theories from the accumulated body of knowledge about a phenomenon or set of related phenomena. Theories are explanations. They are the most powerful explanations human beings have ever created. Most people treat theories as “just an idea, a guess” and those who are ignorant of the processes involved in creating a scientific theory are dismissive and even derisive of theories. This leads to the silly idea that theories are of no importance in daily life and that somehow there is a “real world” outside the world of ideas. All these people who talk about the uselessness of theories and ideas routinely assume that the brakes on their car do work – that the brake can stop the car. Of course, the reason why one should expect this to work is that humans invented brakes based on theories developed by physicists. To our knowledge we are the only organisms on this planet who can imagine something that does not yet exist physically -- it is an idea – and we can actually then create a physical thing based solely on the idea. Usually this idea about what “could exist” is based on a thorough comprehension of the scientific knowledge that indicates that such a thing could be created – like a telephone you can carry in your pocket and talk to anyone in the world who has a similar telephone. This was an astounding idea to anyone alive 100 years ago – barely comprehensible in the mid-20th century. Now people all over the world have these “cell phones” in their back pockets.They are the product of scientific knowledge, the development of theories, and our capacity to create physical objects based purely on ideas. Exercise. How much do you know about the phenomenon of interest to you? Have you reviewed the existing literature, the first step in the research process? Assuming you have reviewed the literature, can you identify gaps in our body of knowledge. These may be gaps because we know nothing – there’s just nothing in the literature. However, more commonly than gaps due to no knowledge are gaps that are due to poor validity and reliability and limited explanatory power. See the document What Makes a Good Contribution to the Body of Knowledge for some guidance about how to decide whether a particular research report (journal article, presentation, etc.) is “worth your precious time to read.” You need to be a critical reader of the literature. That’s part of your job as a scientist and as a researcher. You will never have time to read everything you want to read. You need to learn to pick and choose what’s really valuable to you. I would also encourage you to read Deciding What to Read. It lays out the steps in finding the relevant literature quickly and efficiently. Topic 3: How can you contribute?There are four ways that scientists you can contribute to the body of knowledge. Level 1: Descriptive research. The simplest and first step in scientific research is to produce a thorough, detailed description of the problem, issue or need that the researcher hopes to address through research. All research involves some description, but at the very earliest stages of research about an emerging phenomenon, the descriptive research is critical. We have to understand the nature of the problem. Otherwise, we will not be able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant knowledge about the phenomenon. In the earliest stages with COVID19, for example, the scientific community had to describe the virus and its means of transmission.” Literally, what does it look like and how does it move from one person to another? There was a digital representation of the COVID 19 virus that made all the news media in 2019. This article gives a nice explanation of how that visual image was used and misused to some degree. But it shows the importance of descriptive research when we are on the trail of something new and unknown or very poorly known. The image did start to “tell a story” about the virus. For example, we learned that the spikes on the virus are the way it gets into our cells. You cannot formulate hypotheses at this point in research. It is an important step in research, but not one that helps us understand how and why a phenomenon exists. We can only report our results and compare our results to those of others. We cannot really reach many, if any, conclusions that apply beyond our specific study. Level 2: Exploratory research. Exploratory research goes one step further and starts to examine “how the thing works” – whatever the phenomenon may be. Exploratory research is both exciting and frustrating. It is exciting because you figure out new “pieces” of the puzzle before you on a regular basis. It is frustrating because you do not know yet what is important and what is not important, or what is even “right” about what you have discovered and what is not. Often, there is an overwhelmed feeling because you just do not know where to focus further research. This was true with COVID – a myriad of questions developed in the exploratory stage. Does it stick to elevator buttons and the counter where you sat your grocery bag down in the kitchen? Does a mask really keep it out of your nose and mouth? What about the eyes – can it enter my body through the eyes? Does Clorox really kill it? I remember pushing crosswalk signals with my elbow to avoid direct contact with the skin on my hands. Exploration is exciting – but kind of scary. This is the point where we use our descriptions to identify what is already known about the phenomenon or about similar phenomenon. We can use the existing body of knowledge to establish and test existing ideas about the processes at work – and we can add to the body of knowledge. We can test hypotheses and we can move beyond description to reach conclusions. Level 3: Explanatory research. This is where we get to the heart of research – how does this happen? Why does it happen? What outcomes can we expect if we do X to stop (or to stimulate) the processes at work? At this stage in the research process, the researcher is expected to produce hypotheses (or propositions as they are sometimes called when qualitative data analyses are used). We can compare our conclusions to those of those and build a case for any additions or changes we feel would improve the body of knowledge. We can make broader, more inclusive conclusions that other researchers can then test. This research typically takes longer than either descriptive or exploratory research. Researchers typically go through a series of studies that build upon each other to create a coherent, internally consistent and logical set of conclusions that will be put to many tests by other researchers and perhaps survive all that testing to become generally accepted as valid and reliable explanations. Level 4: Theory-Building research. Theory-building is the ultimate goal of scientific research. Most of us will not attempt to build theory and for those of us who do, our contributions will not typically be of the scale of “a brand new theory of X.” Rather our contributions will consist largely of three types. (1) We may add ideas (constructs or concepts) to existing theories. This allows us to develop more robust theoretical explanations that incorporate more of the many components that produce a given phenomenon. (2) Often we will compare two or more theories to see which provides the best explanation of a given phenomenon. This is a very valuable contribution to the body of knowledge because it allows us to focus on the most viable and best validated theories in our disciplines. It helps us “throw out the bad ideas.” (3) We may extend the “domain” of the theory. Domain does not mean a geographic area or even a specific phenomenon. It refers to the range phenomena that a theory can explain in part or in full (rarely). For example, many social scientific theories focus exclusively on the individual response. Some emerging theories focus more on explaining how the interaction between group effects (like group identity) and individual effects (like personality type) interact to produce given outcomes. This permits us to provide a more robust explanation of both individual and group behaviors – makes our theories more powerful predictors of overall societal patterns of behavior. Topic 5: Getting the Question Right It all starts with a good research question. Research answers questions. I strongly encourage you to watch this very short video. It provides an excellent explanation about the difference between thin and thick research questions. You really want a thick question. However, if you start to work on a really little researched phenomenon you may need to do a lot of descriptive research – and the descriptive research questions are typically fairly thin. It’s a fun video – a couple of minutes long. This video “Developing a Research Question” by Dr. Sam Fiala is not nearly so entertaining and it’s about 25 minutes long. BUT it is an in-depth explanation of how to come up with your own good research question. I strongly encourage students to watch it. You will see that he applies many of those 8 critical components of thinking like a scientist in explaining how to develop a good research question.We will come back to the research question later as well, but it is helpful to see this now. Recommended Readings If you have little experience reading and understanding refereed research journal publications in the sciences, you will find the following resources very helpful. Being able to read and understand reports of scientific research is a critical skill for graduate study and for this class. I will not make these required readings but I most STRONGLY suggest that you look at them, even if you are "pretty familiar" with such reports. These readings will also help you with all assignments except perhaps Assignment 1. Locke, L.F., Silverman, S.J. & Spirduso, W.W. (2004). Ch. 4 - How to select and read research reports. In Reading & Understanding Research, 2nd Ed., p. 59-76. e-reserve Pyrzcak, F. (2005). Ch. 1 -- Background for Evaluating Research Reports. In Evaluating Research in Academic Journals, 3rd Ed., pp. 1-11. e-reserve |