Observation and the Viewing and Recording of. Data

The process of viewing and recording events is called observation. Viewing and recording mainly consist of watching a phenomenon and recording the observation.

The accuracy of observations are limited because real world observations some times miss stuff. An important event may occur when observations are not being mad or outside the range of the observer’s sight. As a result observations can be some what subjective since it is too easy for an observer to see what he wants to see because the observer is looking for what he wants to see So patterns resembling what the observer wants to see are more likely noticed. It is also too easy for an observer to not see what he does not want to see because the observer is not looking for what he does not want to see and patterns not resembling what the observer is not looking for can be over looked. Knowing of such problems helps avoid them.

As important as Observation  is in science it does have its limitations and pitfalls. Being aware of those limitations helps one to avoid them.

Repeatability its Importance in Science

The replication of a scientist’s experiments and results by other scientists is called Repeatability. Since the physical laws are the same every place any experiment conducted by one scientist should work for any other scientist so to provide a double check the results.

Experiments with well controlled variables are the best prospects for repeatability to work because replication can be as completely as possible. It does not work well in situations where there are difficulties in controlling variables. In such cases results are not easily replicated. The degree of repeatability varies from field to field.

The Scientific Process of Experimentation

The investigation of the causal relationships among variables or the testing of a hypothesis is called Experimentation. Experimentation under controlled conditions is fundamental to the ideal of science. Both the scientific method and repeatability works best with controlled experiments but not all area of scientific study lend them selves to experiments. There are a lot of real world observations that are beyond the possibility of a controlled experiment do to things like distance, size and time. In some cases such as in historical sciences experiments can only be used to test the possibility of a hypothesis by trying to replicate a past event to show it could have happened.

In an Ideal Experiment the number of variable should be reduced to one and be easily repeated by other scientists. This increases the likely hood that someone will try to repeat it and makes it more likely that the attempt to repeat it will succeed. It should also be limited in complexity and cost which also increases the likely hood that someone will try to repeat it making it more likely that the attempt to repeat it will succeed.