PSY 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Informed Consent, Demand Characteristics, Blind Experiment
9 Aug 2018
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Document Summary
Science is a search for knowledge based on carefully observed, replicable data. Good observations and measurements often suggest a pattern that leads to a hypothesis, which is a clearly predictive statement, often an attempt to explain the observations. A good hypothesis leads to predictions and an experiment with a method. If studies using different methods all point to the same conclusion, we gradually increase our confidence in the conclusion. After making the measurements, the investigator determines whether the results are impressive enough to call for an explanation or whether the apparent trends might have been due to chance. A researcher"s final task is to consider what the results mean. Replicable results are those that anyone can obtain, at least approximately, by following the same procedures. When researchers try to verify a small effect, they use meta-analysis, which combines the results of many studies as if they were all one huge study.
