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Culture, history and society

Culture, history and society

Madness in the method: why your notions of how science works are probably wrong

10 Dec 2020 Robert P Crease
Taken from the December 2020 issue of Physics World, where it appeared under the headline "Madness in the method".

A new book suggests that traditional notions about “the scientific method” are flawed and misleading, as Robert P Crease discovers

jury in courtroom
Messy business Science is less of a rigid process and more like a jury weighing up evidence in a trial. (Courtesy: iStock/Chris Ryan)
You know what the scientific method is until you try to define it: it’s a set of rules that scient

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Robert P Crease is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, US and writes the monthly Critical Point column for Physics World, robertpcrease.com, e-mail robert.crease@stonybrook.edu. His latest book is The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory
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