Things We Believed Before the Scientific Method

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know

Episode: "Things We Believed Before the Scientific Method"

Date: June 19, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark and Charles “Chuck” Bryant
Podcast Network: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore the origins, processes, and philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method. They discuss how beliefs and knowledge formation shifted from mysticism and faith toward empirical inquiry, outlining science’s evolution from the Dark Ages through the Renaissance to modern scientific collaboration. The hosts dive deep into what constitutes science, why the scientific method matters, and how its application—and misapplication—shape our understanding of the world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Is Science? (07:06–18:17)

• Definition:
  Science is described as "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experimentation" (07:28).

• Practical and Universal:
  Science is not just for scientists or for labs—it’s hands-on, about discovery, asking questions, and is something everyone does even in day-to-day problem-solving.

  • Josh: “Anybody can use it. It’s just kind of part of being a curious human.” (08:12)
  • Chuck: “It’s not even anyone can use it. Everyone does use it. You just might not know it.” (08:30)
  • Example: Troubleshooting an overheating car is essentially doing science.

• Types of Data:

  • Quantitative: Measurable, numerical data (e.g., temperature readings).
  • Qualitative: Observational, descriptive data (e.g., bird behavior).
  • There’s debate as to whether qualitative data is “truly scientific,” but Josh points out that without qualitative insights, fields like social sciences wouldn’t exist (11:30).

• Reasoning in Science:

  • Deductive Reasoning: From general rules to specific cases.
  • Inductive Reasoning: From specific observations to broader generalizations.
    • Not universally accepted in science—some claim only deductive reasoning is valid.
    • The Edwin Hubble example: Hubble observed galaxies moving away and generalized, leading to the theory of the expanding universe (14:01–15:59).

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2. Hypotheses, Theories, and Laws (21:22–25:34)

• Common Confusion:
  The hosts clarify that in science, a “theory” is not just a guess—it’s a rigorously supported explanation.

  • Chuck: “One thing that really chafes my hide is ... ‘Well, it’s just a theory.’” (21:33)
  • Josh: “As far as science goes, a theory is not just something you postulate ... it’s beyond hypothesis and strongly supported.” (22:50)

• Process:

  • Observations → Hypothesis (testable hunch) → Repeated experiment & verification → Theory (broadly accepted explanation) → Law (universal, with even further support and predictive power).
  • Example: The “Jerry bathroom break theory”—offers a memorable illustration using in-office observations and hypotheses (23:09–24:35).

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3. Origins of the Scientific Method (25:34–33:40)

• Early Barriers:
  The Dark Ages in Europe saw little advancement, with the Catholic Church and reliance on “revealed truth” hindering scientific inquiry.
• Renaissance & Rationalism:
  Rediscovery of works by Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Euclid led Europeans to adopt systematic investigation.
  • Roger Bacon: Credited for cautioned skepticism—“Just because Aristotle wrote something doesn’t mean it’s true” (29:33).
  • Albertus Magnus: Advocated for empirical evidence over revelations (29:49–30:11).
  • Francis Bacon: Formalized a step-by-step method for scientific investigation—“call me the dad of the scientific method” (32:39).

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4. Power & Progress of Science (33:40–35:39)

• Technological Advances:

  • Lens grinding led to microscopes, triggering discoveries such as cells in cork by Robert Hooke, and protozoa by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (33:45–34:49).

• Collaboration:
  Science’s progress relies on worldwide collaboration, shared experiments, and building on past knowledge.

• Cell Theory:

  • Elaborated as an example where discoveries built upon one another—from Hooke’s cells in cork (plants) to Leeuwenhoek’s protists, to Matthias Schleiden (all plants are cellular), and Theodor Schwann (all animal tissues are, too).
  • Culminated in Rudolf Virchow’s assertion: “All cells come from pre-existing cells” (35:56).

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5. Disproving vs. Proving in Science (36:11–41:15)

• Spontaneous Generation:
  People once believed dirty shirts made mice; maggots arose spontaneously in meat. Louis Pasteur debunked this with S-shaped flask experiments, demonstrating microorganisms originate from other microorganisms, not from non-life (37:57–39:10).
• Key Insight:
  Science can seldom “prove” anything but can disprove explanations and lend support to existing theories.
  • Josh: “With science, unless you’re talking about math, there’s no such thing as proof ... there is no real ultimate proof in science.” (40:02)

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6. The Scientific Method: Steps in Practice (44:04–53:35)

• Fluid but Generally Follows:

  1. Observe/Ask a Question: “Why do Galapagos finches have different beaks?” (45:24)
  2. Formulate a Hypothesis: Testable, falsifiable statement, often an “if...then...” (48:18)
  3. Experiment:
     • Independent Variable: what is changed/manipulated
     • Dependent Variable: what is measured/responds
     • Control Groups: essential for comparison
  4. Analyze Data: Draw conclusions from your measurements and observations
  5. Share Your Results: Critical, yet often neglected in modern research (53:54)

• Quote:
  “Don’t get fancy—just do good science, step by step, methodical.” (50:35)

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7. Science Today: Replication & Bias (53:54–58:39)

• Modern Challenges:
  • Not enough experiments are independently replicated.
  • Publication bias: journals favor “exciting” or positive results, rarely negative or null findings.
    • Chuck: “Only 14% of published papers are ‘negative results’... it used to be like 30%.” (57:06)
    • Josh: “About half... of published research can’t even be replicated.” (54:09)
  • Peer review is imperfect—sometimes deliberate errors slip through.
• Threat:
  Pressures for funding (“careerism”), fame, and journal prestige can undermine the method's rigor.

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8. Limitations of Science & Pseudoscience (58:40–62:34)

• Falsifiability:
  Philosopher Karl Popper formalized that for a claim to be scientific, it must be testable and capable of being disproven (58:53–59:50).
• Supernatural Claims:
  Questions about ghosts or God are outside science’s reach—they can neither be proven nor disproven by empirical means.
  • Josh: “If you say ‘science proves there is no God or ghosts,’ you’re making a leap of faith as much as the opposite claim.” (60:01–61:05)
• Moral/Value Judgments:
  Science can inform us about climate change or ocean acidification, but saying “that’s bad” is a value judgment, not a scientific one (61:05–62:09).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the universality and simplicity of the scientific method:
  “You just take this thing and it came out of the birth of rationalism... when you place it into the world and make it function, there’s a lot of implications.” (05:29, Josh)

• On the collaborative nature of science:
  “As a scientist, you’re a part of a larger collective of scientists. Every scientist needs one another. It’s why there’s journals and conferences... to share information, and to party.” (16:05–16:34, Josh & Chuck)

• On debunking spontaneous generation:
  “If you left some wheat seed in a sweaty shirt, it would spawn mice, I think was one of them ... There’s a lot of weird ones.” (36:11, Josh)

• On science’s inability to provide absolute proof:
  “With science, unless you’re talking about math, there’s no such thing as proof.” (40:02, Josh)

• On modern scientific problems:
  “One rule of thumb among biotech venture capitalists is about half, 50% of published research can’t even be replicated.” (54:06, Josh referencing Economist article)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Definition and importance of science: 07:06–08:12
• Types of data and reasonings (quantitative vs. qualitative; inductive vs. deductive): 09:29–14:01
• Example: Edwin Hubble and inductive reasoning: 14:01–15:59
• What is a theory? (vs. hypothesis, law): 21:22–25:34
• History: From the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and birth of the method: 25:34–33:40
• Cell theory advances: 33:40–35:39
• Pasteur and disproving spontaneous generation: 37:10–41:15
• Steps of the scientific method in practice: 44:04–53:35
• Modern issues: bias and reproducibility: 53:54–58:39
• Limitations of the scientific method, pseudoscience, and value judgments: 58:40–62:34

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Memorable Moments

• Funny hypothetical on “Jerry’s bathroom breaks” using the scientific method (23:09–24:35).
• Quip about “boxes rarely fly unless they’re carried by one of those delightful Amazon drones” (47:31).
• Lamenting the rise of “careerism” and the “race for sexy studies” in academia undermining science (58:21–58:42).
• Disagreement about the film Birdman—mini detour in their signature light-hearted style (46:13).

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Conclusion

Josh and Chuck offer a lively, insightful journey through the evolution of scientific thinking, the careful craft of the scientific method, and the ongoing challenges in scientific culture. They stress that science is not just for professionals or confined to labs but is a fundamental human approach to understanding our world. They caution about the method’s limitations and the dangers of conflating science with value judgments or misapplying its authority. The episode ends with encouragement to support science literacy and skepticism—not cynicism—as key virtues, and a reminder that true science is a collective, continually self-correcting human endeavor.

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Transcript

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Wilmer Valderrama]

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[Ben Walter]

Every small business owner has that one moment that could have broken them. But remarkably, it didn't. Hi, I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. And on season three of the Unshakeables, my my co host Kathleen Griffith and I are bringing you more incredible stories of overcoming the impossible. Listen to the Unshakeables wherever you get your podcasts and learn [e-mail] podcast JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC Copyright 20 and 26 JP Morgan Chase Co.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody, Chuck here. Continuing our journey down the science trail. Here we are with I believe episode seven on the list, how the scientific method works.

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. Stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Why you grinning?

[Josh Clark]

It's been a while, man. I know, it's funny. Like those words come pouring out of my mouth and you wake up in

[Chuck Bryant]

the middle of the night saying that and Yumi like, slugs you in the face, right?

[Josh Clark]

She's like, go back to sleep. She has to dry my brow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, we pre recorded some for December as we like to do to take a little time off at the end of the year and not explain things for a few weeks in our real lives.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like people ask me things like what

[Josh Clark]

happened to that stick of butter?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I don't know. Don't ask.

[Josh Clark]

Don't even ask me.

[Chuck Bryant]

I could tell you yeah, but I'm not gonna.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's how it goes in my house. Find your own butter. December was find your own butter month.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's a good. That's. That's a good one.

[Chuck Bryant]

That should be a T shirt for us. Stuff you should know.

[Josh Clark]

Find your own butter or December's find your own butter month.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's right.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe a stick of butter, some garland on it. Yeah, I like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it's good to see you again, man. Good to be back in here.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it is nice to be back.

[Chuck Bryant]

As much as the break was great. I'm happy to be explaining things again.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's good, because if we got in here and you're like, I can't do this, I can't do it again,

[Chuck Bryant]

we'd be in trouble.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So I'm glad we're all feeling good. Jerry, you feeling good? Jerry's got two thumbs up and a big goofy smile.

[Chuck Bryant]

Two of her, three thumbs.

[Josh Clark]

She looks like Bob from that male enhancement pill ad.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, is he the guy? The old man that's like super buff?

[Josh Clark]

I wouldn't call him old. He was middle aged. He looked like kind of a Bob Dobbs typey dude. I think that's kind of who he was modeled at.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is he the guy that's super muscly now? I'm thinking of someone different.

[Josh Clark]

I think you're thinking of Jack lalanne.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no, no. Just there's some ad. There's some old man that looks, like really creepy because from the next.

[Josh Clark]

He's super, like, buff.

[Chuck Bryant]

He looks like a 25 year old.

[Josh Clark]

No, remember, there was like a male enhancement pill, and I'm making air quotes

[Chuck Bryant]

here for erectile dysfunction.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, well, there go the air quotes. But yes. And it was like in the early 2000s, I think maybe late 90s, but I think early 2000s, and these ads were everywhere. And there was Bob and like all these great things happened to him because he started taking this pill. I can't remember the name of the pill, but the company, like, got into a lot of trouble because it was basically like a subscription service. And like, you gave him your credit card and you got this free trial, but then they started sending it to you, and it was like next to impossible to cut off service.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interesting.

[Josh Clark]

They were like, no, we want your mailness to be enhanced. So you, You've seen these ads?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I was gonna start asking questions, but why? Why bother?

[Josh Clark]

I will, I will YouTube. I will find it on YouTube.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll be like, oh, Bob.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you will. You go, oh, I want to come back in and record an insert. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

The guy that's on the back of all those pill bottles in my bathroom.

[Josh Clark]

So, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

I don't even remember how we got. Oh, yeah, Jerry did that. It was Jerry's fault. But you remember we did the enlightenment episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. We talked a lot about how there's this kind of tug of war over the human psyche between rationalism and mysticism. I guess you could. You could put it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I feel like we're talking today about the scientific method.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Great idea, by the way.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you very much.

[Chuck Bryant]

Kudos.

[Josh Clark]

It's been a long time coming.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because I realized, like, I understand it as fully as I don't understand science. I understand the scientific method because it's pretty cut and dry and it's beautiful and elegant and simple. But then you just take this thing and it came out of the birth of rationalism. And when you place it into the world and make it function, there's a lot of implications. Is it being used properly? Is it being used responsibly? Are we putting what constitutes faith into that? It just raises all this other stuff. And it made me realize, like, I don't understand science as much as I want to. So researching this, it was awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this is a cool episode, I think, because not only are we going to talk about the scientific method, but we're going to talk about just science. Like, what is science in general. And some of the rock stars along the way who really laid out the path remarkably in, like, many, many years ago, coming up with these amazing discoveries that still hold. You know, you can, like, hold their feet to the fire for a lot of this stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because if you come upon a universal truth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You know, it is what it is. Like, you got to be the person who discovered it because, you know, you saw it, you realized it a certain way, but ultimately it was there already.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like Newton. I mean, we'll talk about all this stuff, but it's not like now we're like, oh, Newton. Most of what he said was wrong, but that's understandable because it was a long time ago. Like, his stuff holds up really, really well.

[Josh Clark]

I was wondering if he, on his deathbed, was just like, oh, man, I contributed so much to humanity, it's mind

[Chuck Bryant]

boggling, but I couldn't enhance my malehood.

[Josh Clark]

Well, Bob hadn't come along yet, so. Chuck, let's just quit stalling and talk about science. Like, what is science?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I hate the old elementary school defined as but it's a pretty good place to start here to get a base definition of science.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, old William Harris did a great job with this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, William Harris did a great job on this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Science, the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experimentation.

[Josh Clark]

Boom. End of podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the first part of that is science is practical and it is, you know, they make a good. He makes. Bill Harris makes a great point in here. It's not just stuff you do in a lab and it's not just for scientists. It is all about being hands on and active and it's all about discovery and asking questions about. I mean, that's how everything is ultimately solved is by someone looking at something and having a question about it.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And then the scientific method comes in when you say. And this is how you properly get to that answer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

And he makes another good point too, that the idea that there is a method, a scientific method, makes it seem like it's secreted away among the fraternity of scientists. And like you said, anybody can use it. It's just kind of part of being a curious human.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not even anyone can use it. Everyone does use it. You just might not even know that you're using it. I mean, one of the examples they use later is if your car overheats when you figure out why and fix it, that's the scientific method playing out exactly.

[Josh Clark]

Based on reasoning.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

And deduction and induction.

[Wilmer Valderrama]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, there's so much to talk about.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so let's talk about that definition that you had. So the first part is that science is. It's a practical activity. So science is practical, right? Yeah, it's this, the basis of the whole thing is discovery. Right. You see something, you see birds in flight and you say, where are those birds going? And if you just went and laid down on the ground and went to sleep after that, then you're not, you're not carrying out science. But if you went, I want to find out where those birds are going and you follow them and you start taking notes. That is the basis of science is discovery.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that's the observational part as well. Sometimes you're using a microscope or a telescope, sometimes you're using your eyeballs. But no matter what your tool is, you're going to be watching something and recording what's called data or data, depending on, I don't know what kind of person you are.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do you say? I think I say both. I think I say data. Data.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I don't think I've. I don't think. I say data. Data. I say data.

[Chuck Bryant]

Data.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we'll go with data.

[Josh Clark]

You say both.

[Chuck Bryant]

I feel like it just comes out of my mouth one way or the other, and I don't really think about it.

[Josh Clark]

I think that's like being ambidextrous. Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm a. Yeah. So once you are observing this data. Well, there are a couple of kinds. There's quantitative data, which are numbers. Like your body temperature is 98.6. Although I think that's changed slightly now, hasn't it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. It used to be like, if you were a human being, your body temperature is 98.6, and they realized, like, no, there's a little more variation than that.

[Chuck Bryant]

But any kind of just numerical representation is quantitative, whereas qualitative is behavioral. Like, I'm going to watch that bird eat and poop for the next week.

[Charles Barkley]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or what happens if I. What will the slug do if I put a bunch of salt on it? You know, don't do that. No, you really should not do that.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that's awful.

[Josh Clark]

But the reaction of the slug is gathering qualitative data. And depending on who you talk to, there isn't qualitative data in science. That it should all just be quantitative because. Yeah, because quantitative data is reproducible. Qualitative data is. It's not necessarily reproducible. You can observe the same phenomenon, but you're not necessarily controlling it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, I guess I get that, but I agree with Bill here in that they are both. They go hand in hand.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And neither one is more important than the other. You need to have both.

[Josh Clark]

Well, a lot of people do, and we'll talk more about it later, because without the idea that qualitative data is acceptable and scientific, you don't have the social sciences. Like, they don't exist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[Josh Clark]

But yes, we have quantitative data and qualitative data. I agree with you. They're both useful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. It is an intellectual pursuit. So you can make observations on data all day long, but until you bring reason, in this case, inductive reasoning, which is driving a generalization based on your observations, then it's just data sitting there on a piece of paper like it's supposed to lead you somewhere.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly. And so we should talk about inductive and deductive reasoning, depending, again, it's really weird. One of the things I came across is that there's not a universal agreement on. On how science is carried Out. I saw some places where there's like, there's no place for inductive reasoning in science. Then other places are saying, well, you have to have science using inductive reasoning. Everybody seems to agree that deductive reasoning is the basis of science.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But that you also have to have inductive. So deductive is basically taking a big broad generalization and saying that it applies to something specific, More specific. Yes. Inductive is the opposite, where you say, I've noticed these different data points. Yeah. And that means that this broad generalization is true. So you go from specific small observations to a broad generalization. And the reason that a lot of people say, well, inductive reasoning doesn't have any place in science is because you're saying those birds over there are all brown. Therefore all birds of that type are brown. Even though I haven't seen every single bird of that type in the world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

I'm saying that all those birds are brown. And a lot of people say there's no place for that in science.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, if you want to go out and prove that, then that's your business. You know, you can't just say that and be like, and I'm done.

[Wilmer Valderrama]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guess you could, but you much of a scientist.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But you can use it to formulate hypotheses.

[Wilmer Valderrama]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So you can say, I've generated all these data points. I'm going to put them together and see if this broad generalization is true.

[Wilmer Valderrama]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

So there is a place for inductive reasoning, science. But everybody says deductive reasoning is the basis of science.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, Bill Harris does. He offers a great example for inductive reasoning with Edwin Hubble of the Hubble Telescope. He was looking through the Hooker Telescope, which at the time at California's Mount Wilson.

[Josh Clark]

Is that the one from Rebel Without a Cause?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that's Griffith Park Observatory, which has been redesigned and is really cool now.

[Josh Clark]

Is it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, it was kind of cool before, but it was definitely like sort of the space museum that time forgot.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

So they've updated it.

[Josh Clark]

I'll bet that was cool, though, in its own way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was neat. I used to live near there, so it was kind of.

[Josh Clark]

But that's like the famous one, at least in the movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's where they have the big knife fight.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And there's this James Dean statue there too.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I didn't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like a bust. So, yes, Edwin Hubble, he's at Mount Wilson and he's looking through the Hooker Telescope. Which was the biggest one. And at the time, everyone said the Milky Way galaxy is it. That's what we've got going on.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Did you know this? Yeah, I knew that because we're talking 1919.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Not that long ago.

[Josh Clark]

Did not realize this.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he started looking through this telescope and said, you know what? These nebula that everyone says are part of our galaxy look to me like they're beyond our galaxy. And not only that, they look like they're moving away from us. So he made this, through inductive reasoning, made this observation that, you know what? I think there are many, many galaxies out there. And not only that, I think they are expanding. And through technological advancement with telescopes over the years, scientists, it proved to be true.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Pretty cool. So this is a really good example of him saying, I've made some observations and now I'm going to say this broad generalization. Right. So these galaxies appear to be moving away from another. So the whole universe is expanding. Right. That's inductive reasoning.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's a pretty brave thing, especially back then, because you're really putting your reputation at stake.

[Josh Clark]

It really is, you know. So what Hubble was. What Hubble did was what we've come to see as science. He made some observations, he came up with a hypothesis and then it was tested later on. It's not. You don't necessarily. As a scientist, you're a part of a larger collective of scientists. Yes, right. And every scientist needs one another. It's why there's journals and conferences and things like that. To share information. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And to party.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And to party. And Hubble came up with his own observations. And rather than just experimenting. Experimenting. Experimenting himself, which I'm sure he continued to do, he created this basis of work that he probably realized is going to survive him.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And then later on, scientists came down the road and they tested his hypothesis and they found it was correct. And so his hypothesis became a theory. It eventually became part of the basis of the Big Bang theory that the universe started as a huge explosion and it's expanding still because we're. Because it exploded at one point. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And they did that by carrying out

[Chuck Bryant]

other tests or experiments.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Yeah. So this is how science works. Like some guy back in 1919 made some observations in California in 1925. He proposes this big broad generalization. And over the next ensuing half a century, more and more scientists all around the world start testing his hypothesis and find it to be true. So it becomes a theory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Well, let's finish up here with science. The last part of the definition is that it's systematic and it's methodical and it requires testing and experiments, and it requires those experiments and tests to be repeated and verified. And it is. It's a system. It's a way of working things out. It's a way of working. And that is the scientific method, Basically. Yeah, you have your idea, you pose a question, you theorize, or you put a hypothesis out there and then you go about trying to either prove it or disprove it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. And then the way that you go about proving or disproving it, that's the scientific method. Everything else is just scientific inquiry. The way you go about the standardized way of going about scientific inquiry is the scientific method. And we friend will talk about the scientific method right after this.

[Shingles PSA Narrator]

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, you brought up a point. I think we should go ahead and just get right to my friend.

[Josh Clark]

Let's do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hypotheses and theories.

[Josh Clark]

That's tough to say together. I know you did it, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

One thing that really chafes my hide is when you hear poo pooers of whatever scientific theory say, well, it's just a theory.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you. Where was this thing that you found that Pooh poohed that? Do you remember what website that was? No.

[Josh Clark]

No. Although I do want to give a shout out now that you mentioned it to Explorables. Yeah, it's like an online university basically of free courses.

[Chuck Bryant]

And.

[Josh Clark]

And there is one on scientific reasoning that is just amazing. It's like a huge rabbit hole. You go down, you start clicking on the embedded links and you end up, like, understanding all sorts of stuff. So go check that one out if

[Chuck Bryant]

you like understanding stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's one of the things that bug me if someone says it's just a theory. And this does a great job of kind of throwing that out the window because it's basically mixing up the two definitions of theory.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there's like a colloquial definition that people use every day that doesn't really have much to do with the scientific

[Chuck Bryant]

use of like, I got a theory that Jerry in her one hour bathroom breaks every day is really playing words with friends in the lobby.

[Josh Clark]

I think your theory's correct.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's a theory in the colloquial meaning.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

As far as science goes, a theory is not just something you postulate, say, this may or may not be true. A theory is beyond the hypothesis, and it's something that is strongly supported in many different ways and all. There's all kinds of evidence to support something that eventually becomes a theory.

[Ben Walter]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So your theory about Jerry's bathroom breaks in the scientific world would be a hypothesis. What fact? Well, it'd be a scientific law.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But ultimately it would begin as a hypothesis, a hunch based on intuition, based on data you've collected, observations, that kind of stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Where like, you know, you've seen that Jerry goes to the bathroom for like an hour at a stretch.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Frequently when she comes back, she's finishing up a game of Words with Friends.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

You've heard that she's been spotted in the lobby during these times.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So your hypothesis is that while she is gone for these hour long bathroom breaks, she's actually down in the lobby playing Words with Friends, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Based on knowledge, observation, and logic.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So let's say that you decided to set up an experiment and you experimented and you went and you found Jerry playing Words with Friends five different times. And you told me about it, and I was like, I'm going to run that same experiment exactly the way you did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I would test that same hypothesis. If I found the same results to be true, then what you would have come up with, your hypothesis would move to basically a theory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That is this widely accepted thing, this explanation that Jerry is not actually in the bathroom, she's downstairs playing with friends. It'd be the Jerry bathroom break theory.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And then if it turns out that you find that Jerry spending an hour a day pretending to be in the bathroom, but actually being downstairs playing Words with Friends, if the universe couldn't exist without her doing that every day, you would have a scientific law.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think that was a good example you came up with.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a great example, as it turns out. I guess the point here is when you hear someone say in an argument, well, that's just a theory, just punch them in the head and then tell them what we just said about the bathroom breaks.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they'll say, who's Jerry?

[Josh Clark]

Or just cue up that whole bit and stand outside of their window wearing a trench coat and holding a boombox over your head with this smug look on your face.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so should we go back in the old way back machine a little bit and just talk a little bit about how the scientific method came to be?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Man, this. This thing. What are you running this on these days? What do you Mean, it's a straight kerosene. The fumes in here are killing me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sorry about that. Trying to go green.

[Josh Clark]

You know, kerosene is not green.

[Chuck Bryant]

Diesel.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe I'm choking.

[Chuck Bryant]

Biodiesel. How about that?

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Wayback Machine will run. French fry grease?

[Josh Clark]

That would be fine.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'll get to work on that.

[Josh Clark]

I could handle those fumes.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you teased us with the Renaissance, and the reason the Renaissance was so awesome and necessary was because of something else we've talked about, which was the Dark Ages, when.

[Josh Clark]

Which, remember, that's a rationalist disparaging term for this era.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. But I think sort of rightfully so, because right before the Dark Ages, until about a century after, there was not much advancement at all in the realm of scientific advancement.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's true. That's hard to argue with that. And the reason why is, again, science wasn't really born yet. And there is a huge struggle between rationalism and mysticism. And ultimately, we're living in the age of rationalism now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we should point out, too, that this was mainly in Europe, over in the Islamic world, as I think we had a listener male point out, there were a lot of advancements being made, just sort of flying under the European radar at the time because some say the Catholic Church kind of kept science under its thumb for a while.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, this is a pretty big

[Chuck Bryant]

threat Said, you know, you can't do this stuff. You can't experiment like this. And don't ask these questions.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because here are your answers.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But eventually the Renaissance came about in the 12th century, and people woke up and saw some of the work in the Islamic world and said, you know what? Maybe let's start reading up on Aristotle and Ptolemy and Euclid once again.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They're like, we forgot about these guys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, it literally kind of vanished for a while.

[Josh Clark]

It did from the West.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Fortunately, it was still around, you know, in its home places. But, yes, in the west, they were lost. The Roman stuff was almost entirely lost because it was being suppressed by the locals.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think the Greek knowledge was completely banished.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Somehow. Somehow they got. There was some. We got another listener mail after the Enlightenment one. They said that it was an Islamic scholar who was the one who translated Aristotle into Latin or something like that, and that without this guy, the west wouldn't have had much to start with, because that's where that birth of rationalism came from was this rediscovery of Greek and Roman classical thought. And this was the Basis of scientific inquiry, of rationalism, of saying, like, okay, there's set rules to things, and we need to discover these rules and how the principles of how the universe works. Like, there has to be principles, and we need to find this in a rational, methodical way. And right out of the gate, Europe said, oh, okay, well, whatever you say is right. Then Aristotle. We're used to just believing everything without questioning it. And luckily, Albert Magnus, I think, is who it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Albertus.

[Josh Clark]

Was it Albertus Magnus or Roger Bacon who said. No, it was Bacon. Roger Bacon, who just has this great name. Rog Bacon.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Bacon brothers.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he said Francis and Roger. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, they weren't brothers, though.

[Josh Clark]

But were they related at all?

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I looked that up, and I don't think people know either way. I don't think there's any proof, but a lot of people think because of their names and the way things went back then that they may very well have been related.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I mean, they were separated by 300 or so years.

[Chuck Bryant]

Although Roger was a. Was a monk, so he would not have had children. So if they were.

[Josh Clark]

That's an excellent point.

[Chuck Bryant]

It wasn't necessarily through his line.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It could have been a nephew or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or his brother Kevin might have had the line that matched.

[Josh Clark]

So Roger was the one who said, everybody stop. Just because Aristotle wrote something doesn't mean it's fact, especially when we find contradictions to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Air cell's not automatically. Right. And this is a huge advancement.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Albertus Magnus was the one, I believe, who said, you know, this thing called revealed truth, which is basically God says this instead of a truth found by experimenting, is maybe we should experiment instead and not take this revealed truth as the truth.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And we mentioned in that enlightenment episode as well, about scholasticism, about using scientific inquiry to explain theology, which was, you know, you're still working from a theological standpoint, but you're starting to use scientific inquiry. And the idea that you shouldn't just accept things as truth, that was, again, a huge, huge breakthrough.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Francis Bacon, the other Bacon brother, he's

[Josh Clark]

one of the heroes of the story.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He was an attorney and philosopher and possibly Shakespeare. Oh, really? I never heard that.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interesting. So what do you mean? Like, wrote those under the pseudonym?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Huh. And then the Shakespeare sister was the other theory too. Right. That it was a woman.

[Josh Clark]

I've heard that. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And she couldn't, like, you know, women couldn't be the playwright. So her dumb brother William.

[Josh Clark]

That's A good. Was it her brother?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that was one of the theories.

[Josh Clark]

Huh. This is a good Smith song, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Shakespeare's sister. Was that the name of it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wasn't it a band, too? I think it was.

[Josh Clark]

Was it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe so. Anyway, he was a philosopher and a lawyer and he said, you know what? The Baconian method basically became the scientific method.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was the first dude who really said, this is how the steps that you should take to investigate science.

[Charles Barkley]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

There has to be a framework. And the whole point of this, that we take this so for granted now because it's so intuitively and on its face. Right. As far as scientific inquiry goes. But this is an enormous breakthrough to say, follow this step, these steps, this framework, and if everybody who carries out science follows the same framework, then science will be universal and interchangeable, and anyone in the world, and not just now, but anytime, will be able to carry out the same experiment and will be able to verify or disprove it. And that is amazing that that happened. That's why Francis Bacon is one of the heroes of the story, and he didn't come up with this entirely on his own, but he was the one who said, this is what we're going to do. I'm going to give it a name, I'm going to spell it out, and from now on, you can call me the dad of the scientific method.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that's why Newton was such a rock star, because he so rigorously stuck to the scientific method that all these centuries later, his systems of laws have stood the test of time. And I think it's a good point to bring up, too, that the collaboration scientists is really the hallmark of advancement and moving forward. It's not working in a vacuum, it's sharing your ideas and working with one another. And the whole little sidebar here on cell theory I thought was pretty cool, which was when science quit, or not quit, but started looking at small things instead of looking at the universe around them and at the stars, and said, basically, you know, through the advancement of lens grinding, Antonio van Leeuwenhoek, specifically a Dutch tradesman, was pretty good at making simple microscopes. And all of a sudden, contemporaries like Robert Hooke said, you know what? Let's start looking at tiny things. Because therein might lie the answer to many, many things.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they're right.

[Josh Clark]

Robert Hooke found cork, or he discovered cells by looking at cork. Yeah. Through an early microscope. So in this story, science is hastened by technological advancement. Lens grinding.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

To make microscopes, and then this new Technology is used to further science, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's like mutual inspiration between Leeuwenhoek and Hooke. Leeuwenhoek, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It was neat because Hooke heard about Leeuwenhoek's microscopes, got his hands on one or a microscope, looked at him like cork and said, oh, there's such a thing as cells.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Leeuwenhoek said, oh, that's pretty neat. Let me try. And he said, oh, there's such a thing as little animals, which we call protozoan bacteria. Yeah. And one of the Royal Societies, after Leeuwenhoek presented his findings, turned back to Hooke and said, hey, Hooke, we know you're pretty handy with the microscope. Can you confirm Leeuwenhoek's findings?

[Chuck Bryant]

Are there little animals?

[Josh Clark]

Hook said, there are indeed. I can see them with my microscope.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And that inspired a German botanist named Matthias Schleiden to look at a lot of plants. And he was the first guy to say, you know what? Plants are composed of cells. And he's having dinner one night with his zoologist buddy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And this is about 100 years later.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Theodore Schran. And said, you know what, dude? Order the wine and order the steak. Trust me. Because this place is fantastic. And also, plants are made of cells. Don't tell anyone. And he went, you know what, dude? I have been investigating animals with microscopes, and they're made of cells, too.

[Josh Clark]

And so they figured out at this dinner. Yeah. That everything is made of cells. All living things are made of cells.

[Chuck Bryant]

Boom.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so this is huge. This is a big advancement. Right. That we're hitting upon right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Huge.

[Josh Clark]

But it laid the further foundation. Right. So initial scientific inquiry led to further scientific inquiry and further scientific conclusions and generalizations. All living things are made of cells. And then it was extrapolated elsewhere. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like 20 years later, Rudolph Virchow said, you know what? Not only is everything made of living cells, but they all come from pre existing cells. Which was a huge deal at the time because people believed in spontaneous generation.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. At the time, like if you left some wheat seed in a sweaty shirt, it would spawn mice, I think was one of them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gross.

[Josh Clark]

There's a lot of weird ones. Press basil between some bricks and you'll get a scorpion. Was one. Like they were really out there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Well, the one that is. Well, not true, but the one that you could actually see was rotten meat would eventually spawn maggots.

[Josh Clark]

Right. How did they possibly get there?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Spontaneous generation.

[Josh Clark]

That's the obvious. Explanation. And if you think about it, they're working from Occam's razor. And Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is usually the right one, all other things given. Well, the thing is, spontaneous generation has never been shown to be possible.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

We've got the cell thing over here. Let's investigate that. Yeah, so this, what was the guy's name? Virchow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

He's saying, okay, well, wait a minute, I've got this cell theory I'm working on that's been around for a couple of decades.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cell hypothesis.

[Josh Clark]

Probably a cell hypothesis at the. Nice catch.

[Chuck Bryant]

Don't feel bad though, because this article that you sent said that scientists today, like still like confused those terms. Yeah, just colloquially.

[Josh Clark]

And the how stuff works article makes a good point in saying that science and everything that has to in the scientific method is very fluid and open to interpretation and experimentation, obviously. But so he says, okay, this cell hypothesis, this is a pretty good explanation for what we now call spontaneous generation. He didn't do anything about it. He just put it out there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then along comes Louis Pasteur, who does do something about it. He figures out a great experiment to try to disprove spontaneous generation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's pretty simple too. He basically took a broth, put equal amounts in two different beakers. One had a straight neck and one had an S shaped neck. He boiled it just to make sure everything in it was killed, and then just let it sit there in the same conditions, open to the world or open to the room like it wasn't corked. In other words, he noticed that the one with the straight neck eventually became cloudy and discolored, meaning there was some junk growing in there. And the one in the S shaped neck did not do anything. It remained the same.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it led him to think what?

[Josh Clark]

Well, he thought that germs. That there was such thing as germs, which Leeuwenhoek and Hook had already shown. And that in the S shaped flask they had gotten trapped in the neck. In this, the open neck, they had been able to just enter unobstructed and had generated there. The reason that the S shaped flask was still sterile was because there is no such thing as spontaneous generation. If there were, then no S shaped neck would impede anything like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

And boom, there you have it.

[Josh Clark]

So he disproved that spontaneous generation is a thing, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Through the scientific method.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Here's the leap that a lot of people make, scientists included. That really is a great disservice. To science. He didn't prove cell theory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

What he did was take that cell hypothesis and present some really persuasive evidence that it's probably right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but like this article you sent points out, disproving something is just as important as proving something.

[Josh Clark]

So here's the thing that's the most you can hope for a science is disproving.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

With science, unless you're talking about math, with science, there's no such thing as proof. A theory, even a law, a universal law, still has the potential for being undermined by one single experiment, one single observation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And therefore there is no real ultimate proof in science. There's just theories and support for theories and then ultimately laws and further and further support for laws. Right, right. But they're not proven. What science does ultimately is disprove things or lend support for existing theories or existing interpretations of why things happen the way they do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that's what pasture did. So if you look at that experiment, he disproved spontaneous generation, but he lent support to the cell theory. And probably with his experiment it went from the cell hypothesis to the cell theory because it was just so persuasive. And that's what a theory is. It means that a lot of people out there who are reasonable say this explanation is probably the right one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's predictive. If you do it over and over, you're probably going to get the same result.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But that's not to say that Pasteur showed that if you do this a million and one times that the S shaped flask won't turn cloudy. Yeah, he didn't prove that. You can't prove that. Which is again, science can disprove and lend support. Can't prove.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very good point. So right after this message break, we're going to get into the actual steps of the scientific method.

[Shingles PSA Narrator]

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Sponsored by GSK Snoring, gasping during sleep, Feeling fatigued? Ask your doctor about Zepbound Tirzepatide, the first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5 or 15mg injection. Zepbound contains Tirzepatide and should not be used with other tirzepatide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing pregnant, plan to be or taking birth control pills, taking Zetbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lilly.com It's Charles

[Charles Barkley]

Barkley here with Wayfair, and let me tell you, game day is serious business at my house. If I'm grilling, chilling and watching hoops, my outdoor setup better be ready to play. That's where Wayfair wins. From patio seating and umbrellas to grills and grille accessories, Wayfair's got it all. And it shows up fast. I'm talking fast and easy delivery. So level up your grill game and your outdoor chill game and head to Wayfarer.com to get your outdoor space ready for the season.

[IBM Narrator]

Wayfair Every style, Every home Stuff you

[Josh Clark]

should Know

[Chuck Bryant]

all right, dude, I guess at long last we are there. Like you mentioned before, the scientific method is fluid. And it's not like when you get your science degree, they hand you a little laminated card like the Miranda rights that cops carry that, you know, list out all the different steps you have to take. But generally maybe, yeah, I would.

[Josh Clark]

We should carry those around. We should make little wallet cards with the scientific method just to carry Stuff youf Should Know logo on it oh, yeah, we'll make a million bucks.

[Chuck Bryant]

We could brand them and sell them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Generally speaking, though, it follows these steps. The first thing you do, like we mentioned earlier, is you observe something, you ask a question. Next. Like, Darwin was known, I think when we did our podcast on him, he would spend like a week on 3 square feet of ground on his property.

[Josh Clark]

It was like, even longer than that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Remember? It was, wasn't it?

[Josh Clark]

He said that he didn't. He wasn't going to mow his lawn for, like, three years because he wanted to see what happened.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So he's the ultimate in qualitative data of just observing, writing things down and asking questions. And the reason you ask your question is so you can narrow something down. Like, I think the example they use in here is on Galapagos, like, the beaks of what bird was it?

[Josh Clark]

The finches?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the finch bird. He noticed a bunch of different beaks. So he finally posed a question, like, you know, I think these beaks are different for a very specific reason, and I aim to find out why.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. He said, what caused the diversification of finches on Galapagos. Ew.

[Chuck Bryant]

He should have done that with an accent.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he would have had a British accent.

[Chuck Bryant]

Huh? Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Huh.

[Chuck Bryant]

Unless he was pretending to be someone else.

[Josh Clark]

I always think of him as, like, sounding like Hemingway or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. Drunk and violent.

[Josh Clark]

Kinda. But he wasn't. He was, like, the opposite of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, I saw the movie, so I picture his voice as the dude that played him. Who? I can't remember right now.

[Josh Clark]

Ed Norton.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I finally saw Birdman, though.

[Josh Clark]

Did you see that? Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Great movie.

[Josh Clark]

I disagree.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you didn't like it?

[Zepbound Advertisement Narrator]

No.

[Wayfair Advertisement Narrator]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow, that surprises me. We'll get into that. Off the air. So. Sorry, you just threw me with that.

[Josh Clark]

Make an observation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

He's on Galapagos and he's like, what the heck's with all these different finches? One small island. Why would there be different species of finch? So ask question, and why are they all seeming to survive and coexist so well? Yeah. Then he leads to the question, what's making all of these species of finches so diverse?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Or Bill Harris uses a pretty good example. That's something everyone can understand, like, what car body shape is the best for air resistance. Like one that's shaped like a box or one that's shaped like, aerodynamic, like a bird.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he carries that out in the next step. You formulate your hypothesis based on your, you know, foreknowledge and maybe Observations like, say, you know what? I think that a car shaped like a bird is probably more aerodynamic than one shaped like a box.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. If you're thinking. If you're the type of person who's sitting around asking questions about aerodynamics, you probably already have some sort of sense that a box is less aerodynamic than a bird.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Boxes rarely fly unless they're carried by one of those delightful Amazon delivery drones.

[Chuck Bryant]

They don't have those yet.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're not going to do that, are they?

[Josh Clark]

There's like a pizza delivery drone service, I think, where you have no, is it pizza or grilled cheese in New York? And you go stand on an X after you order and it like comes and drops it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And I can't wait to do it.

[Josh Clark]

I'll bet they're making a lot of money.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's pretty funny. Yet we can't get food to the homeless somehow.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

We can drop a grilled cheese on someone's head.

[Charles Barkley]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

They're like, you, homeless guy, get off

[Chuck Bryant]

of that X. Yeah, exactly. All right, so your hypothesis, I don't think we ever mentioned is typically represented as an if then statement.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. If you're doing good science. It is. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like if the car's profile. Well, the example he uses, if the body's profile related to the amount of air it produces, which is the more general statement.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's like based on a theory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it's going to get more specific. Then the car design, like the body of a bird, will be more aerodynamic than one like a box.

[Josh Clark]

So that's inductive reasoning. Starting with a broad statement and going to something narrow.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's if then at the same time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And now you have a test, you have a question that can be answered. You can figure out a way to answer it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he points out too, this is pretty important, that your hypothesis, if it's formulated correctly, means that it's testable and

[Josh Clark]

it's falsifiable, which are often one in the same. True. You know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that's again, we go to the people who say that their soft sciences aren't real science, they're pseudoscience. Because a lot of the data that they come up with, a lot of the hypotheses they come up with aren't falsifiable, they're not testable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

It's a thing. It's an issue.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a thing. So next up in the steps, you're going to experiment. And when you experiment, you can't just go in there willy nilly and do whatever you want. You have to set up specific conditions and they must be controlled. That's the key.

[Josh Clark]

And you want to. Everything that's supposed to be identical needs to be identical. So basically you have two variables. At least you have an independent variable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And you have a dependent variable. And if you're talking about car shape, that is the independent variable in this study.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's the one that's manipulated.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. It's the one you're controlling. The independent variable is the one you, the researcher is controlling. So in this case, you're controlling the shape of the car. You have yourself a bird shaped car and you have yourself a box shaped car. So the shape of the car changed because you made it change. Now when you blast a bunch of air over it during your experiment, what you're measuring is the dependent variable. So you're measuring what happens based on the change that you made.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And you want to study one single variable at a time, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Don't get fancy. Just do good science step by step, methodical.

[Chuck Bryant]

You also have to have your control group in any experiment and an experimental group and the controlled group is what's going to allow you to compare the test results to that baseline measurement. And you need that baseline measurement.

[Josh Clark]

So like pasture.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it's not just like chance, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Like if Pasteur had just done the S shaped neck and nothing happened.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

He wouldn't have necessarily been able to say that he was right. Even though he was right, he needed that control, which was the open flask.

[Wilmer Valderrama]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or with the cars, you need two cars like you said, one bird shaped and one box shaped.

[Charles Barkley]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or the. Maybe in this case, since the bird shape and the box shape both show up in the hypothesis, you'd need a third like egg shaped one or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I bet that would be pretty streamlined.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the key though is all of those variables have to be. All the other variables have to be the same. Like you have to have them, they have to be the same weight, they have to be painted the same. The tires, everything, the windows. One can't have an antenna and the other not. They've all, they got to be identical other than the one variable.

[Josh Clark]

Right. The independent variable that you're, that's the one you want different. Everything else you want the same. Or else it's possible that, oh well, this one had bigger tires, so that actually made it more aerodynamic.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And you're just doing yourself a favor by doing all that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, you want to rule out everything else but that one variable.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

After that you want to analyze your data so you can draw your conclusion. And sometimes it's kind of straightforward and easy, sometimes it takes a lot of work and a lot of various tools draw it out.

[Josh Clark]

Let's say you're just blasting a car in a wind tunnel.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You're measuring the wind resistance using certain awesome instruments and that kind of stuff. And you're taking that data and then afterward you're going to analyze, you're going to compare the data that you gathered from the bird shaped car, the box shaped car and then the control, the egg shaped car.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

You're going to compare them and you're going to say, well, the wind resistance was less for the bird shaped car than the box shaped car. Which means that my hypothesis was correct.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And here are all the data points. Whereas Louis Pasteur could just say, look at the beakers.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Don't be an idiot, I'm a scientist.

[Chuck Bryant]

That one's got gross stuff. You can see it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But the other thing about science too, Chuck, ideally is let's say that egg shaped one turned out, the control group turned out to have better wind resistance than anything. Well, just by virtue of carrying out this experiment correctly, you would have stumbled upon an even better aerodynamic design.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And you would have come up with that little egg shaped Mercedes SUV that was so huge like 10 years ago,

[Chuck Bryant]

the Mercedes egg coming to a store near you.

[Josh Clark]

So that's a big, big part of the scientific method is carrying out an experiment, controlling the variables, analyzing the data. And then there's a step that he missed that is very rarely part of a scientific method list.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That is to share your data.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure.

[Josh Clark]

And this is a huge problem with science right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that article you sent was really eye opening. Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself.

[Josh Clark]

It's an Economist article. It's up on the Internet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It was kind of scary that it's. I mean, here's some of the data he points out is one rule of thumb among biotech venture capitalists is about half, 50% of published research can't even be replicated. And biotech firm Amgen found that they could reproduce only six of their 53 landmark studies in cancer research.

[Wilmer Valderrama]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you can't repeat these things. It's like everyone's fighting for dollars in fame. Maybe not fame, but some are career advancement.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Such that they're kind of not doing that final step any longer.

[Josh Clark]

No. And it's not necessarily just them, it's the other scientists aren't going back and saying, well, let me see if your results are reproducible. People are just taking it on faith.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

We need another Roger Bacon to come along and be like, dude, we can't just blindly accept that one person carried out this one study and then just go do clinical trials on it without anybody reproducing it to see if the results can be verified independently.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because. And this is a good time to mention bias. There is such a thing as bias and it still happens. A scientist is usually out to prove something or disprove something.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That they want a specific result. Like even if you're super open minded, you're probably hoping to disprove or prove something one way or the other and your confirmation bias might, you know, even if you don't think you're doing it, you might nudge out some results that don't support your hypothesis.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so you won't make it into that awesome journal.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which this author points out that journals need to start putting in what he calls uninteresting results and experiments.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or like the stuff that's not sexy.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Or studies that failed to show that their hypothesis was correct.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Stuff that's disproved.

[Josh Clark]

Those things still need to, well, not even disprove. Well, yeah, I guess it is disproved. But yes. Like the guy set out to say, like the a red balloon uses less helium than a silver balloon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And it turns out that no they use the same amount of helium. Well, if that study gets published and put out there into the scientific literature on helium and balloons, then it's going to prevent some other scientists down the road from wasting time, money and helium, which as you'll remember, is an increasingly needed commodity by carrying out the same experiment.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Whether the results are positive or negative or what, the study's meant to be shared. And that's the point of the scientific method, is to reduce bias. And if you follow it all the way through ideally, and do all of the steps, including share your research, whether it's happy or sad, then science benefits, the world benefits. And by not doing that, the world does not benefit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He points out that these days only 14% of published papers are quote, unquote, negative results. And it used to be like 30% or more. And he says because a lot of it has to do with this sort of, you know, getting in these journals and you're the rock star scientist and this study is super sexy.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, if they kind of quit going that route and made it what it should be, then research dollars would be better spent and people could, you know. He said the peer reviewed thing isn't even all it's cracked up to be.

[Josh Clark]

I know. He mentions a study from a medical journal that gave a bunch of peer reviewers some stuff with deliberate errors inserted into the research, into the studies. And even when they were told that they were being tested to find this, they still missed a lot of it. Yeah. So, yeah, science needs to kind of reevaluate the way it's carrying out science. It's not science. The problem isn't science itself. The problem isn't the scientific method, it's the way that it's being used or not followed through. And a lot of it has to do with academia and the people funding science.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he said, you know, these days there's up 7 million researchers, and back in the day, even in like the 1950s, there were like a few thousand maybe.

[Ben Walter]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there's just a lot of career competition. He calls it careerism. And so you fake a result or two or you just nudge out some results that don't support your hypothesis. You want the bigger paycheck or the fame or notoriety, and all of a sudden science is not science.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, it's pseudoscience.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And speaking of pseudoscience, I think we've reached a point where we should talk about the limitations of the scientific method. Because it does have its limits, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like the way that the scientific method is set up, especially if you go through, if you include falsification, which most scientists now say is a thing like falsifiability of your hypothesis, means that you have a real scientific hypothesis there. If it can be disproven by some observation or some measurement or whatever, then it's falsifiable. And if it's not falsifiable, then it's not really science. So the thing is force something to be falsifiable. And it was actually a philosopher that came up with the concept of falsification, a guy named Karl popper in the 1930s. He was the one that said you have to be able to falsify something for it to be disproven or supported. And if not, then it's pseudoscience. Well, part and parcel of that is that what you're saying has to be able to be detected empirically. There's some way that the presence of it has to be measured or inferred.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And so a lot of people say, well, then with the scientific method, it reaches the limits of its current usefulness when it tries to explain the supernatural.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

When somebody says, like, ghosts are real. Exactly. You can't prove that. Well, you also can't disprove it either. Right, right. And so if you are a scientist who says, because the scientific method can't prove or disprove the existence of ghosts or God, there is no such thing as ghosts or God, you're making a leap of faith just as much as the same person who says science can't prove or disprove the existence of ghosts or God. Therefore gods and ghosts are real. They're both leaps of faith. And that really the most scientific approach to the existence of the supernatural, whether it is ghost or God, is that we simply don't know and that we cannot know scientifically. But that doesn't mean that it does exist or doesn't exist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And that saying that science shows that it does or doesn't exist is by definition the opposite of what science shows. Science shows neither it's not capable of showing or showing that something doesn't exist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a good point. The other place where science can get corrupted is when it blurs the lines or when people blur the lines between moral judgments and science value judgments. Like, you can study global warming, you can study cause and effect, you can report data, but when you make that, secondly to say, and this is a scientist, I mean, someone can come along and say, global warming is bad, you shouldn't drive your suv, that's fine. But a scientist can't do a study and say that because that's a value judgment. And that's where science can get corrupted. Pretty much. Right. You can study global warming and results till the cows come home, but you can't assert that if you use this light bulb, you're a bad person.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Or ocean acidification is bad. Ocean, it's not good for humans. But if you're a jellyfish, it's awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

You know, so yes, again, you made a great point. It's not science, it's people using science to make value judgments.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So ultimately, the scientific method, although it does have its limitations in that it needs empirical data.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

To prove or disprove something. It's not. It's not flawed. That's not a flaw, that's a limitation. And it's. When it's misused, then its results become flawed or skewed. And that's the people Doing it, man, not science.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

It's pretty interesting stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, man, this is a good one.

[Josh Clark]

I thought so too, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Way to start out with a bang.

[Josh Clark]

Boom.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's all downhill from here.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to know more about the scientific method, check out that article on the Economist. Check out Explorables. And then of course, check out the scientific method in the search [e-mail] and since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. But quickly, before listener mail, we get asked by listeners all the time, what can we do? Since you have a free podcast, we can't pay for it. What can we do to help you guys? And one thing you can do that we would appreciate is go to itunes and leave a rating and a review for us. Yeah, that makes a big, big difference in keeping us up there in the rankings. Which means more people find stuff you should know. After they listen to Serial, they'll just say, well, geez, there's other podcasts in the world.

[Josh Clark]

What is this podcast?

[Chuck Bryant]

So ratings and reviews really help us out, and it doesn't cost you anything but a few minutes. Be honest. We're not saying, go, leave us some great review, but go, leave us a great review.

[Josh Clark]

You said it.

[Chuck Bryant]

And tell one person about stuff you should know. We would appreciate that too. Turn somebody onto the show. And that's it. That's our version of a pledge drive.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. We do that, what, once every three years now. Not very obnoxious and it lasts 40 seconds.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so on to listener mail. This is from my sister in law, actually.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, there's some net.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Jenny. Jenny Bryant, she mentioned in the homeschool episode homeschooled her kids for a little while and she sort of corrected me. Love the homeschooling episode, guys. One very big trend these days in the homeschooling community is what Abby, my niece, does, which is hybrid homeschooling. So two to three days a week she is at school, and then the rest of the time she's a plane. She's not a plant. The rest of time, she's at home. So she says it's a great option with curriculum provided and new topics taught at school and then worked out at home. Many of these schools are accredited, making getting into college, including Ivy League schools, hassle free. And Abby school has sports teams, homecoming. Abby's actually an excellent volleyball player.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Beta Club, newspaper, staff, all the good stuff. The flexibility is great for families. And we are huge fans of how the Hybrid approach prepares students for college by allowing them time outside of class to manage their work and life schedules. So that's from Jenny.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Via text. First listener mail via text.

[Josh Clark]

How did you print that out? Did you retype it and print it?

[Shingles PSA Narrator]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dude, are you serious?

[Josh Clark]

You can print from texts?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, you just copy pasted to an email. Oh.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Forgot about that method.

[Chuck Bryant]

How in the world did you print a text?

[Josh Clark]

Did you do that with your thoughts? I have a niece who is excellent at volleyball, too. Oh, yeah? How we should get them together. Jimmy's. I don't know, 10, 11, 12. Okay. Something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Abby just turned 13, so they're.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, maybe they face off against one another.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Is she in Atlanta?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, she's up in Canton.

[Chuck Bryant]

You never know.

[Josh Clark]

Where's Abby?

[Chuck Bryant]

She's in Roswell. But they. I think with volleyball, they kind of have played all over the state.

[Josh Clark]

Wouldn't that be bizarre if they play each other?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we'll just see each other at a match one day on opposite sides of the court with our arms folded.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. What else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

Well, like Chuck said, go leave us a review. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us@syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com stuffyou should know. You can email us. Do we still do that? Yeah, you can't text [e-mail] and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyou should know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

[Shingles PSA Narrator]

By the time I hit my 50s, I'd learned a few things, like how family is precious, work can always wait, and 99% of people over 50 already have the virus that causes shingles. Not everyone at risk will develop it. But I did. The painful blistering rash disrupted my life for weeks. Don't learn about your shingles. Risk the hard work way. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today.

[Charles Barkley]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

Mom, can I have Lingokids? Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Zepbound Advertisement Narrator]

When did we become the Lingokids house? No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs.

[Josh Clark]

This week it's Lingokids. Why Lingokids? Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

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This is an iHeart podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Guaranteed Human.