Member-only story
Why the Scientific Method is SO Important
A while ago, I was a judge at my college’s science symposium and something surprised me more than a few mismatched posters and unprepared students. The first poster I judged, I asked the student something about how her experiment coincided with the scientific method. She asked me what was the scientific method.
Stop the presses. Hold the phone. Disconnect the internet.
A college student didn’t know the scientific method.
I was more than disappointed. Granted, this was one student from an introductory biology class; she might not have wanted to go into the sciences and was just taking the class to meet a credit requirement. Call me a teacher, but I think everyone should know what the scientific method is and be able to apply it.
Don’t be embarrassed if you are now trying to rack your brain for all its steps. I assume you know the scientific method is the basics of objective research, used to obtain knowledge through observation and experimentation. It teaches scientists how to properly test a question and come to an objective conclusion.
The basics of the scientific method are:
- Ask a question, do background research and come up with a reasonable hypothesis.
- Test the hypothesis with an experiment. The experiment may have to be revamped if is ineffective.
- After all the data is collected, it must be organized and analyzed.
