BIOLOGY 1114H Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Statistical Significance, Falsifiability
23 Aug 2016
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Verifiable observations and descriptions: data from natural world. Experiment: what happens when hypothesis is rejected, change hypothesis and/or redo the experiment, what happens when hypothesis is accepted, repeat experiment and make additional predictions. Hypotheses should be posed in a testable, falsifiable, in-then style question statement. When a hypothesis is accepted, repeat the experiment and then report results in scientific journals. Other scientists will repeat your experiment and confirm or deny your results. Science doesn"t prove anything, it is just made up of accepted or rejected hypotheses. Doesn"t mean all hypotheses are equally good or bad: some are more descriptive and accurate. Scientific theory: hypotheses that have survived large amounts of tests and explain many occurrences. Law: generalized body of information, doesn"t answer why? questions. Fact: observation repeatedly confirmed and generally accepted as true. Truth: never accepted as permanent in a scientific context as anything can be disproved in the future. Outcomes of tests are rarely black/white or right/wrong.
