this is going to be our second section of unit zero this is the precontent that comes before the first unit in AP biology in this section we're going to basically just talk about the scientific method now the scientific method is something you've probably heard about and talked about in other classes but we're going to just kind of focus on some details that you should know about before getting into an AP class the scientific method is a process or like a step-by-step method in which scientists use experiments and observations to conduct their research now there's a lot of different diagrams and different steps that go into the scientific method but I like having a kind of a circular pattern for the scientific method instead of a linear sequence of events because all of these things like gathering information forming hypotheses publishing results interpreting data they go they all go into the scientific method but they're not like a series of linear events that have to occur on a day-to-day basis for scientists again you might see something that looks like this I always like to say that this is a good start for what the scientific method is but scientists don't wake up every single day and go through these steps and just go all right the next step let's do this the scientific method in their process of just researching analyzing doing experiments collecting data it's so much more interesting than just this step-by-step process but again this is a good start as you can see at the top you typically start out by asking questions and making observations through those observations you then form what's called a hypothesis or an educated guess part of the process of then testing your hypothesis is producing a detailed and accurate experiment troubleshooting to making sure your experiment is working properly and that your procedure is accurate is part of the process after completing your experiment you have to analyze your data and communicate your results to the scientific Community I would say this is the most difficult part of Science and it's also the most difficult part to kind of talk about because everyone's analysis is going to be different sometimes experiments go differently and their results just don't match up what you were predicting but you still have to communicate that in some meaningful way and how we interpret that data can be very difficult I've showed this diagram to my students as well where I think this shows a better way of kind of looking at the scientific method more as a circular uh fashion than just a linear series of steps and there's a lot that goes on in each one of these bubbles I'm not going to go through every single little step here but there's just a lot more that goes on in science than just a linear sequence of events in these scientific experiments we have things called the independent and dependent variables and independent variables is the part of the experiment that that you change this is typically only one variable since we're trying to see how a single variable is going to influence another typically on a graph the independent variable is on the xaxis the dependent variable depends on the independent variable this is the part of the experiment that changes as a result of the manipulation specifically this is the one that scientists take data from and it's usually found on the Y AIS so again the dependent variable depends on the independent variable in these scientific experiments we usually have something called the control which is the Baseline that allows us to compare the variable results with a known value so for instance if we're looking at how fertilizer affects plant growth we would create a control group where there's no fertilizer so we can accurately kind of describe and compare how the growth differs from the Baseline this is specifically called a controlled experiment now these controls allow us to kind of look for different types of Errors within our experimentation so there's two different types of control groups we have positive and negative control groups in a positive control group we experiment with defined results from the variable this just helps us confirm that the system is working correctly a positive control group helps us identify something called false negatives where something should be occurring but if our syst system or our like data shows that it's not occurring that means something's going wrong for instance in a false negative test you can see this person is pregnant but the test is saying no you're not pregnant this tells us something is going wrong with our procedure either the devices we're using are inaccurate or just something is going wrong in a negative control group we know that we shouldn't see a result from the variable this helps us check for false positives so you know this person is not pregnant but if the Test shows that they're pregnant we know that our devices aren't working correctly and something in our experiment needs to be fixed both of these are just ways that we can check to make sure our data acquisition from our devices or whatever we're using is accurate once we get results and we publish them or we try to publish them we use something called the peer review process the peer review process is a system in which we use to assess the quality of the research basically what happens is once you submit your research and your paper experts in the field are anonymously given that research and what they do is they use their expertise and they look through and they come through to make sure that all of your procedures all of your funding everything about your research is accurate these experts just check for errors or bias in data or anything that shouldn't be there and again the reason why these experts are anonymously given is so they don't introduce their own bias into the research and checking for errors this part of the scientific method is probably one of the most frustrating Parts just because of how diligent scientists need to be with their procedures their writings and just their experimentation overall but I think arguably this is the most important part of that process this is basically a way that science self checks itself to make sure that bias or errors aren't introduced into our findings I think something that would surprise Society is when these Publications are published in these journals you know what kind of discussion and arguing can go on between scientists there is so much back and forth that goes on between scientists about certain Publications now it's not saying that that research is wrong and it's not saying that science doesn't know what it's talking about it's just that these scientific publication especially nowadays are so specific and how we interpret data can be so difficult I remember a couple years ago there was a paper that was published about breaking up T-Rex into three different subspecies or species of of Tyrannosaur and the arguing that I saw online I want to laugh but it was comical there's so much back and forth on these really specific papers about how they interpret data and how they interpret their research however I don't want to try try to discredit science because these arguments aren't saying that T-Rex didn't exist it's just saying how do we interpret the data and again this is I would say the most interesting part I always like to get scientists or especially paleontologist opinions on on certain research that's coming out and you know their views on things because these are the experts in their field they've spent years a lifetime learning about different parts of their job and they are the true Experts of the data and how it should be interpreted but again just as a review scientists rarely ever just follow this step-by-step process the scientific method looks more like this where there is constant going back and forth between these different areas