forum for week of 12 September

The placebo effect is one aspect of scientific method that serves to accommodate the unknown factors involved in medical intervention. Within this context, you will be right to claim that if someone believed strongly in something, it may sometime come true (or otherwise known as miracle healing).

I agree with you in that there is a level of bias in what is defined as the proper scientific method. Scientific method relies heavily the existence and interaction of 'tangible' proofs in the universe. By doing so, and with the establishment of extensive procedures and experimentation criteria, it has advanced and accelerated our knowledge base in the last 200 years (at least). However, because of the success and reliance on these 'tangible' proofs to provide us with concrete evidences to prove and disprove our beliefs, the perception of scientific method has shifted into demanding exclusively for these 'tangible' proofs.

With public perception of scientific method swayed by the success and rigor of scientific method in improving our life, the resulting consequence is that any other unexplained phenomenon that cannot be explained by scientific method are almost either cast aside as pseudoscience or simply branded untrue, on the basis that these phenomenon does not fall within the definition of 'tangible' evidences and hence cannot be tested (or does not conform with the other scientific beliefs). The emphasis here is that there are other aspect of things in the universe that science has yet had a chance to even perceive it, let alone study (such as within the energy-energy interaction such as dark matter in space or particle physics).

So to answer your skepticism to the 'proper' scientific method. Although it may be bias, scientific method has so far served us very well at least in the last 200 years and continues to do so. We should remember that scientific method has its limitation, and although vastly popular and reliable, is not the only avenue of testing beliefs. In a way, it is not 'proper' to rely exclusively on the scientific method to verify the truth of a belief, as science is a knowledge base in progress and is not even close to exploring all the details of things in the universe.

But on a more realistic note, the public generally rely otherwise for the sake of practicality (or ignorance).

Ken Wong