Science Checks, Tests, and Corrects Itself
- The strength of science lies in the way it builds trust in knowledge despite uncertainty.
- This reliability comes from the systems it uses to test, filter, and revise claims.
- This makes it have a unique claim to reliability compared to other Areas of Knowledge, where authority comes less from tradition or belief, and more from method and community checks.
Hypotheses Show Science Is Built To Be Falsifiable
Definition
Hypothesis
A testable statement or prediction that can be supported or refuted through evidence.
- Scientific research begins with a problem or question.
- To approach it systematically, scientists form a hypothesis, a clear, testable prediction about what they expect to find.
- The value of a hypothesis is that it can be disproven and if the evidence contradicts the prediction, the hypothesis must be revised or abandoned.
- This makes it different to religious or artistic knowledge claims because though meaningful it cannot usually be proven wrong.
Note
If science deliberately avoids certainty, why do societies often treat scientific knowledge as absolute?
Hint
- This links directly to TOK’s core concept of certainty.
- Scientific claims are always provisional, designed to be overturned if evidence requires it.
Peer Review Shows How Communities Shape Knowledge
- Scientific trust doesn’t come from a single knower.
- Peer review places individual work into the hands of a community that checks methods, results, and logic.
- This results in a process that's social, where knowledge only becomes “scientific” when others agree it meets shared standards.
Hint
- This reflects the shared vs. personal knowledge distinction.
- An idea in your notebook is personal.
- Once tested, reviewed, and accepted by others, it becomes shared scientific knowledge.
Example
- In the early 20th century, scientists hypothesized that bacteria caused stomach ulcers.
- This challenged the prevailing belief that stress was the primary cause.
Replication Highlights The Need For Consistency
Definition
Replication
Repeating the study under different conditions and still finding the same result.
- In the natural sciences, one experiment, no matter how striking, doesn't make reliable knowledge.
- It acts like a stress test: if knowledge can withstand repetition, it earns trust. If it fails, confidence collapses.
- This is difficult in practice though because subtle details in design, context, or participants can all affect whether a result holds.
- This means that reliability in science isn’t just about getting the “right answer,” but about proving that the answer isn’t a fluke.
Example
- In the 2010s, researchers tried to replicate 100 famous psychology experiments. Fewer than half produced the same results.
- Studies on willpower, social priming, and even facial expressions influencing emotions all came under scrutiny.
- This shook confidence in psychology and forced the field to adopt stricter methods like preregistration (publicly declaring your hypothesis and method before running the study).
Self-Correction Makes Science Adaptive, Not Fixed
- Newton’s mechanics still explain how a ball rolls across a table but at cosmic and quantum scales, Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics replaced it.
- This doesn't mean Newton was “wrong,” his theory works (and still does) under certain conditions.
- Yet, science didn’t collapse when it outgrew Newton; it just adapted and became more precise.
- This is interesting because most other areas of knowledge treat revision as weakness instead of strength.
Tip
- This self-corrective nature explains why societies lean so heavily on science in decision-making.
- Public policy, medicine, and technology rely on knowledge that can adapt to new contexts
Example
- Religious knowledge often claims authority by being eternal. A truth that changes risks losing its sacred status.
- Ethics resists radical self-correction, imagine rewriting human rights every decadethe instability would make moral systems useless as guides.
Self review
- If replication is the core of scientific reliability, what happens in sciences like astronomy, geology, or climate research, where events (a supernova, an ice age, a carbon spike) can’t be repeated? How do they build trust without replication?
- If scientific knowledge is always provisional, should we treat it as more or less trustworthy than AOKs that present themselves as timeless truths?
- Should we trust science because of the knowledge it produces, or because of the processes it uses to weed out mistakes?
