What is Good Science?

Credibility and Standards

A "good" scientist tries to make sure that research is credible and is aware that there is no end to the human ability to make up and believe just about anything. Our brains give us the “feeling of certainty” so easily in order to build a sense of a coherent, consistent reality.

"Good" scientists always consider the effects of bias, blind spots and misinterpretation on any research. That is why they attempt to put in safeguards, such as:

  • Double blind, controlled experiments, replication, falsification, ample sampling, appropriate demographics
  • Peer review (outside experts confirm findings), interdisciplinary discussion, continuing professional education and re-certification
  • Better tools and technologies for observing the workings of nature more directly (e.g. electron scanning microscopes, spectroscopy, diffusion tensor imaging, genetic micro-assays, supercomputers)
  • Better methods to analyze and verify data (statistics, consideration of multiple variables, simulations, etc.)
  • Informatics: creating conceptual frameworks and information tools that track and help synthesize the vast overload of data
  • The disclosure of any conflict of interest and all affiliations and funding sources
  •  Study of the history and sociology of science: how culture affects attitudes and societal support for directions of research. How changing views and paradigm clashes emerge from the scientific process.

Puttering
A Vital Role for Basic Research

But there are still limitations to any research. And there is fraud, fabrication and falsification. Hidden agendas, ego games in science, turf wars, and growing commercialism is dangerous to the practice of "good science." If a company spends millions of dollars developing a product, they don’t want to admit that it is ineffective.

Why support for “basic research” is so important
Scientists supported to follow their intellectual passions without regard to commercial viability enable the entire field of knowledge to evolve.

Scientists can have blinders too
Because of bounded rationality: no one can keep up with everything and we are all naive realists in areas in which we are uninformed. Scientists are people who can get entrenched in beliefs and assumptions, not to mention downright prejudice (i.e. eugenics, etc.), And because there are real limitations to rationality in the way humans process, perceive and organize information.

But, a credible scientist never makes absolutist claims.

Disproving a hypothesis is as important to science as confirming it.

Science is not supposed to be an ideology, a religion, or an answer to all of life’s questions

Science does not provide a direct sense of meaning for human existence.

We are a species of self-conscious creatures: who viscerally feel our smallness in the vast cosmos; who are all too aware of our own imminent death and probable non-existence. The terror, confusion, and awe this engenders mingle together and come to the surface during times of quiet reflection, as well as unexpected disruption.
  • Science does not give solace to a fragile humankind that sees unrelenting suffering everywhere and knows loss and despair.
  • Science does not offer immediate answers to ease the fear and confusion of daily life or the dread of an uncertain future.
  • Science does not have a stake in the mythos of life: it ignores the common human experience of personal revelation, the search for spiritual purpose, specialness, or essentialism.
  • Science does not confirm our deepest hopes—nor does it bring us direct entry into the realm of the ineffable or the transformative.

Science is not meant to do these things

Thus, science is just not reassuring enough by itself to emotionally satisfy the majority of people in the world or to provide a structure of meaning. And the backlash against science comes back in full force whenever it chafes against the proponents of ideas that do claim to provide deeper meaning, certainty, personal salvation, etc.

However, the findings of science (and its discovery process) often inspire awe, wonderment, amazement, excitement, and meaning, particularly for those who are less invested in specific doctrines and the search for personal destiny.

Science is hard work
It is always a battle to overcome human limitations and biases and to be able to look openly at evidence regardless of our cherished assumptions and preconceived notions.

Science is counterintuitive
Scientific fact, as well as good scholarship, can be a crushing blow to our cherished world views. 
  • Scientists should never claim to answer ontological questions that are untestable and indefinable.
  • Scientists should never claim objectivity, authority, or expertise in a field outside their own.
  • Scientists are also human beings and can be biased, ideological, deluded, or just plain wrong. 

But the process of science enables bias to become transparent through expert peer review and continuing experimentation and verification.

The process of science has built-in error correcting — but only if allowed to work unimpeded by unwarranted political or social pressures from those who seek to distort findings for their own agendas. Interference with this process has happened all throughout history and all too often still occurs.

The ideal attitude to nurture in young scientists is to value finding out what is true rather than what supports their premises. Disproving a hypothesis should be as important to a scientist as confirming it.