So once we have collected some data, our next
step is going to be analyzing the results.
An analysis is simply comparing your objective
data to your original hypothesis.
Does the data support you hypothesis or does
it refute your hypothesis?
You are going to use statistics to help you
here, so you are not just making a conclusion
based on your feelings or general ideas, but
statistics help us be objective about our
analysis.
There are two possible outcomes when you analyze
your data compared to your hypothesis.
You could match your hypothesis.
That doesn’t mean you are done with the
scientific method.
It just means that you need to retest under
new conditions.
So, you found out an answer that seems to
be right for one particular situation and
now you need to try it under new ones.
With the colds example we have been using,
you found out something that works for college
students, but maybe it is not the same for
little kids or for elderly folks.
You would need to retest your hypothesis under
new conditions and see if it still holds up.
The other possibility is that the data does
not match your hypothesis and this does not
mean you are a failure as a scientist and
that you need to stop and go do something
else completely.
This just means you go back to Step 2 instead
of Step 3.
Now you are just going to go back and revise
your hypothesis.
Remember that we defined a hypothesis as an
educated guess based on previous experience
or knowledge, and after you do an experiment,
you collect data, you have more information,
so you can refine and make a better hypothesis.
So either one of these is part of the scientific
method.
So if we look at how that works, we’ve got
data coming in, we are analyzing our results,
if it matches, you are going to go back and
run additional tests.
If it doesn’t match, you are going to go
back here, revise your hypothesis, and go
through these steps again.
Step 6 is one that people often forget about.
This is the peer review and publish step.
This is when you share your results.
It is important that you share the methods
and the study design, the data that you actually
collected, and your conclusions, statistics
and how you reached those conclusions.
This does a couple things.
This makes science self-correcting.
If there is information that is not right
– maybe you didn’t analyze your data correctly
or maybe there was a basic flaw in your study
design – the only way you are going to find
out about that is if other people look at
your information and start asking questions.
There are many discoveries that have happened
over the last couple thousand years where
we figured out: “oh wait, the planet isn’t
flat” “oh wait, the earth is not the center
of the universe.”
That comes from this public discussion of
data, as we gain more information and knowledge,
we share it and that is a key part of science.
It also, in a more practical sense, keeps
us from repeating work unnecessarily.
Think about the number of people who are working
on breast cancer or AIDS research, if you
figure out a drug that seems to work, you
want to let everyone know about that.
Equally important, you need to let people
know if something didn’t work.
It is a little hit to the ego to say that
your hypothesis was wrong, but it is also
an important part of science to share that
information so that we can move on from that
hypothesis and spend [our] limited time and
money on hypotheses that are more promising.
Something people express frustration with
scientists sometimes because they see a news
story where you have two scientists sitting
next to each other and they are arguing about
something.
It’s like – “why don’t they agree?”
– “they must not know what they are talking
about” Scientists don’t always agree!
They are going to have a public discussion
about how to interpret a particular piece
of data.
This disagreement does NOT mean that they
don’t know what they are doing.
This is instead, just an uncomfortable but
necessary part of the scientific method.
So I have sort of a funny example of this.
I went to the North American Bat Research
Conference several years ago and I was in
a room with 200 of my people who all study
bats, having interesting conversations.
At one point, we were discussing the Western
Mastiff Bat and how they were really difficult
to catch in nets.
There was sort of some grumbling from one
side of the room and some of the biologists
that were working in the desert were like
“what do you mean, you are not catching
Mastiff bats?!?”
“We catch Mastiff bats all the time!”
Here is this cute little Mastiff bat face…
The biologists here in Northern California
were saying “Well no, you don’t catch
Mastiff bats – they fly too high, they don’t
come down until very late at night…”
It turned into some name calling, and maybe
some accusations of “wow, you don’t even
know how to catch bats” and “where did
you go to school anyway?”
It was pretty uncomfortable for about an hour
and a half, discussion went on and on.
Let me scroll down here to show you a map
of where these guys occur.
Notice that there are the Mastiff bats that
are in the Sierras and in the coast, and then
there are Mastiff bats down in the desert.
After a long conversation, what we figure
out was that the Mastiff bats in the desert
are behaving in a very different way than
the Mastiff bats in the mountains.
The techniques that you need to survey up
here are different than the techniques you
need to survey here.
So we actually moved forward for recommendations
in our state for how we study the Mastiff
bat based on this really uncomfortable argument
that actually led us to move our understanding
of bats forward.
