When I go through the scientific method in my Introduction to International Relations Theory class I discuss the various steps that a good scientist needs to go through when trying to understand events, or even beliefs. I always start by explaining that widely-held beliefs aren't always true and that "facts don't speak for themselves." Simply because many people believed that the world was flat didn't make it any more so than the widely-held belief that the earth was the center of the universe.
If we get the steps right we not only can understand the world around us better, but we can begin to make predictions. This is the essence of the scientific method.
I spend almost two weeks going through the scientific method in my IR class, specifically discussing how we use it to make predictions and build theories about conflict and war. When it comes to any series of events (or developments) in the international community the goal is to understand not only "what" happened but "how" conflict happens in our world. The larger issue of "why" something happens is better left to students of philosophy and religion.
Whether or not God "willed it" is not the domain of the scientist. But it is still a useful discussion.
While we are pursuing the scientific method we have to understand that we will never get the same type of certainty in the social sciences that we get in the hard sciences. The law of gravity, for example, is different from the "laws" that explain human error and the causes of war. The key to understanding this is knowing that the steps and rigour that flow from the scientific method are essentially the same across disciplines, across academic schools, across professions and, yes, across time.
Finding the causes behind war requires the same kind of discipline and patience for the political scientist as does finding causality in a criminal investigation for a detective. Perhaps more importantly, finding causality means walking through intellectual traps and the mine fields put in place by those who would rather believe what they know rather than what is being discovered.
Helping us to understand the importance of the scientific method is this clip from Credit Suisse's Michael Mauboussin. His three steps - Observation, Forecasting, and Sorting Relevance - for making decisions on financial matters are short and to the point ...
For the record (and for my students), Mauboussin's three "scientific" steps mirror what we discuss during the first two weeks of my IR class: 1) Investigation, Observation, and Analysis (Mauboussin's Observation), 2) Hypothesis & Predictions (Mauboussin's Forecasts), and 3) Theory Building (Mauboussin's Sorting Relevance of new information against what you know).
During all these steps we also have to be aware of basic stumbling blocks like counter factuals, confirmation bias (this one's especially funny/sad), false equivalencies, paranoia, and simple illiteracy and ignorance (this one's sad/funny too).
If you get all of this right you will begin to distinguish yourself from those with simple, ill-informed, opinions.
I think I'll leave it at that.
- Mark
UPDATE: From Barry Ritholtz, the most laughable of all assumption-based theories (The Big Picture).
Here are several links where I discuss junk science, the intellectually lazy, the science behind prejudice, and the various components of the scientific method ...
http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2012/10/americas-on-going-tribute-to-ignorance.html ...
http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2007/11/this-weeks-program-religion-and-society.html ...
http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2011/05/end-is-near-so-were-told.html ...
http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2010/10/dark-side-of-our-free-market-myths.html ...
http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-nazis-took-from-california.html ...
http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2012/03/science-behind-prejudice.html
No comments:
Post a Comment