What is Science?

Science is a system of obtaining, interpreting, verifying, and classifying knowledge. It requires hypothetical problems, guesses about the outcomes of those problems, reliable tests or experiments and debate about the significance of the outcomes. A scientific claim must have validation through observable tests or the application of natural laws. It must also be replicable by other scientists in the field. Only by repeated experimenting can we verify correct knowledge. Furthermore, science can be both historical and observational. Historical science uses the laws observed in the present and applies those laws to figure out what happened in the past. In this essay the concept of science will be illustrated through the comparison of one scientific article with a non-scientific article.

One article that is considered scientific is from the journal Psychology and Neuroscience and is titled “Traumatic Brain Injury Patients: Does Frontal Brain Lesions Influence Basic Emotion Recognition”. This article describes a study that was performed to determine whether traumatic brain injury to the frontal cortex results in an inhibited ability to recognize basic emotions or inhibit executive functions in daily life (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 377). I consider the article scientific for the following reasons. It presents a testable problem (correlation/causation between brain lesions and inability to recognize emotion). It reviews previous literature about this problem which is important to replication studies in particular (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 377). The scientists then created a replicable test with measurable results to test their hypotheses about the effects of frontal cortex injuries on the ability to recognize emotion (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 377). They selected test subjects with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in the frontal cortex using strict selection criteria in order to rule out confounding factors in the study (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 378). They also selected a control group (non-TBI) using similarly strict criteria (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 379). The researchers then designed an experiment where they tested the ability of TBI patients to recognize obvious facial expression on photographs and compare their results with the control group (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 380). These different facial expressions were presented in the same order to each patient to reduce confounding factor effects (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 380). This experiment was repeated six times for each patient to illustrate interpersonal and intra personal variation (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 380). Using ANOVA models the researchers concluded that there was a significant difference between the abilities of TBI patients and non-TBI patients to recognize basic emotion (Martinis et al., 2011, p. 382). This article is scientific because it uses hypotheses, replicable experiments with measurable results and findings are based on the current as well as previous experiments.

The second article chosen was not scientific in its methodology but had some scientific content. The second article was titled “Which is the Smartest Nation in the World” and was found in Psychology Today (Wai, n.d.). This article argues that the current debate about American education lagging behind other countries education is unfounded and it provides some data to illustrate this (Wai, n.d.). Taking the testing results (PISA) from several countries, the author remarks that on average the United States is at the lowest only if the top 1 percent of students taking these tests are considered. Otherwise, the United States is near the top (Wai, n.d.). I do not consider the second article scientific because it does not provide a replicable test for determining the country with the highest test scores (Wai, n.d.). It also disregards average data, which may be unscientific. When we only consider the top 1 percent of students, the United States may actually be ahead, but it should not erroneously concluded that those top students should have more resources (Wai, n.d.). The problem may be that the vast majority of American students are not measuring up to their international peers. Science does not have the liberty of cherry-picking data to support viewpoints. Furthermore the idea of “smartness” is not really defined well in the passage. Should a country’s “smartness” be measured by the number of top scorers or by the high score itself? To make this article more scientifically credible I would make definitions more strict, would include all relevant data in the evaluation, and used testing data from all countries (PISA does not have data for China).

Science is about the objective evaluation of facts. Scientists have systematic rules governing how they conduct experiments and how they interpret that data. One major difference between the two articles above is that one was intended for a scientific audience while the other was intended for the public. These different purposes have affected the writing style and the methods used by each author. While both articles have scientific content, only the first one uses strictly scientific methods to determine its position.

References

Martinis, A., Faisca, L. F., Esteves, F., Muresan, A., Justo, M., & Simao, C. (2011). Traumatic brain injury and basic emotion recognition. Psychology and Neuroscience, 4(3), 377-384.

Wai, J. (n.d.). What’s the smartest country in the world. Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201401/testing-testing/whats-the-smartest-country-in-the-world?tr=HomeColItem.