KF thank you and glad you clarified that many testers needed to get same
result from experiment.  I googled "Cell" and got 10 pages and had hard time
getting beyond basic unit of life. Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: "KF Etzold" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 7:55 AM
Subject: The Scientific Method and PD (with emphasis on the scientific
method)


> Rick posted some references on the scientific method; here is a brief
> outline of the usual proceedure followed in research with some coments on
> PD and intelligent design. As far as cells are concerned I had a similar
> question, which I posed to a biologist. The result is that I now have a
> 1000 page, ten pound tome called "The cell".
>
> K. F.
> ______________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> Ray:
> Please  won't someone on the List with a science background explain to all
> what the scientific method is?   Also, what actually is a cell?
>
> Paula Nixon:
> Parkinson's research, what if they are going down the wrong alley as the
> pdrecovery.org thinks? They finance their own research and are getting
> Recoveries.
> ______________________________________________________________________________
>
> OK;
> I am a scientist, and the work I do uses the scientific method. To solve a
> problem, or to find an answer to a question the first thing one needs to
> do
> is to create a hypothesis. This is a construct, based on previous,
> established and verified results of a scientific inquiry. Fundamentally,
> one poses a question and then tries to answer it by experiments or
> observation. Unfortunately in many cases there is some uncertainty
> attached
> to the answer and so the experiment or observation has to repeated many
> times and by different observers. After getting the same, compatible
> results over and over again the hypothesis is accepted as valid. In
> general
> it not sufficient for one experiment to verify the hypothesis. Multiple
> verifications are needed under different circumstances (such as changing
> the ambient temperature, whether light is present etc.). There is the
> question of whether a natural law can be true or not. Strictly speaking
> this is only partially a valid question, because in science there is no
> such thing as absolute truth, only multiple verification.
>
> One of the pillars of research is the ability to project forward: using a
> combination of laws we can predict the future behavior of a new system. If
> this reliably happens then the constituent laws are generally accepted as
> "true". Notice that there is no definite, absolute way to establish
> validity. An example of the validity of a physical law is  Newton's law of
> acceleration, F=ma (Force equals mass times acceleration). Is there a way
> to establish the truth of this law? The answer is no, BUT does it describe
> the motion of bodies? The answer here is yes. It would not be possible to
> fly the Space shuttle, if it were not for the "truth" of this law and its
> predictions. It is this sequence that fails in "intelligent design". The
> hypothesis is that living things were designed by God. But the scientific
> requirement of verifiability is missing. So intelligent design is an
> article of faith, the key element of religion.
>
> But what about laws which are changed, or worse, become invalid. The
> second
> instance would be due to an incomplete hypothesis i.e. not all factors
> were
> taken into account. Thus the hypothesis is satisfied but was not
> sufficiently broad. An example is the notion that the sun revolves around
> the earth. This was based on incomplete observations (and religious
> fervor). The first case (change) is a little more subtle. Newton's laws
> hold in ordinary terrestrial situations but then Michelson and Einstein
> came along and argued that the laws need to extended for very high speeds.
> This is the case for Special Relativity
> which must be invoked for objects moving with speeds comparable to the
> speed of light. At ordinary speeds Newton's laws are still fine but
> corrections are necessary at higher speeds. So one cannot argue that these
> laws became invalid but rather that they had to be extended.
>
> In the discussion of research "going down the wrong path", one has to
> recognize that many problems are multifaceted and all paths need to be
> examined. Usually scientists have a hunch or preference for the most
> likely
> hypothesis. Those will be explored first. But the others must still be
> investigated and either eliminated (wrong path) or verified (right path).
> The key idea is that there really is no "wrong path", assuming that the
> "wrong path" is not some crackpot idea which also happens unfortunately
> but
> is usually easy to spot. If an incompatibility arises the hypotheses
> (plural) must be modified.
>
> There is another subtlety. In physics it generally possible to get ones
> arms around a problem and have an accurate hypothesis. This is not the
> case
> in medicine or sociology, where the hypothesis is almost always
> incomplete.
> This complicates the design of an experiment and the interpretation of the
> outcome.
>
> All of us are familiar with the variability of PD symptoms. Thus the
> correlation of a symptom or set of symptoms in PD with a specific Brain
> defect is very difficult. It is made even more difficult by the appearance
> of confounding symptoms, often due to aging, but unrelated to PD. On
> autopsy the situation is usually clarified, but the "experimental" space
> is
> confined when the PWP is alive.
>
>
> K. F. Etzold
> IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
> Yorktown Heights NY 10598
> 914 - 945 - 3816
>
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