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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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn