1. 001b
Scientific Methods

2. The nature of science Science: Science is essential:
A systematic process for learning about the world and testing our understanding of it
The accumulated body of knowledge that results from a dynamic process of observation, testing, and discovery
Science is essential:
To sort fact from fiction
Develop solutions to the problems we face

3. Global Warming
Fact or Fiction?

4. Science as a Way of Knowing
Pure Science- pursuit of knowledge
Applied Science- search for practical uses of scientific knowledge
Pain relief in terminal cancer patients
tetradoxin

5. Scientists test ideas Two Primary Approaches to Science
Hypothesis-driven or experimental science.
Discovery or observational science.

6. Hypothesis-Driven Studies

7. Discovery/Observational Studies

8. Characteristics of Scientific Explanations
Science is empirical. It relies on observation and experience.
The phenomenon studied must be measurable.
Phenomenon that cannot be measured:
Is this painting beautiful?
Does God exist?
It must be consistent with known natural laws and well-established, well-documented existing theories.
It must be derived objectively from independently confirmable observations.
All scientific knowledge must be regarded as tentative.

9. Scientific statements must be testable and reproducible (i. e
Scientific statements must be testable and reproducible (i.e., valid & reliable).
Hypothesis:The fibropapilloma virus causes tumors in green sea turtles.
Hypothesis: Hermatypic corals
exposed to temperatures above
36oC expel their symbiotic zoothanthellae.
Hypothesis: Naval explosions at the thermocline layer cause hearing loss in whales.
Hypothesis:
Ulua are better predators.

10. Discovery or Observational Science
Some Scientific Questions Can’t Be Answered By Experimentation
Discovery or observational science is still science; falsifiable hypotheses based on natural phenomenon are proposed to best account for observations.

11. The Scope and Limitations of Science
Science acquires knowledge through examination of falsifiable hypotheses based on natural phenomena.
This sets a limit on science; science cannot speak directly to such issues as morality or religion.
The domain and limit of science are often misunderstood.

12. Scientific Method A way to answer questions
Must be testable & repeatable, i.e., validity and reliability
Deductive Reasoning- general to specific
reasoning from general theories to account for specific experimental results
(theory-data collection-analysis)
Inductive Reasoning- specific to general
reasoning from specific observations and experiments to more general theories (data collection-analysis-theory)

13. Lost at Sea
In 1991, a tragic accident in the Pacific Ocean sent a cargo of 80,000 Nike shoes overboard into the sea and seemed to be lost forever. But something very strange happened a year later. Those same shoes were washed ashore in Canada and Alaska, swept thousands of miles by ocean currents. Then in January 1992, several containers fell off a ship in the middle of the North Pacific and 29,000 bath toys burst out into the sea: yellow ducks, green frogs and bushy beavers. Then, just 10 months after the spill, the first duck escapees were sighted ashore on the western coastline of Canada. So why would anyone care about washed-up shoes and rubber ducks, apart from their owners? Surprisingly, experts have used these spills to chart ocean currents and match them against their satellite data and computer models. Some of these toys have even managed to sweep through the relatively narrow Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska, cross the Arctic Ocean, bob down past Greenland, and pop up in the North Atlantic. On January 10, 1992, a cargo ship en route from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washington state, hit a storm in the middle of the Pacific. The containers on deck swayed so violently that a dozen tore free, spilled overboard and at least one burst open. Cargoes fall off vessels every day, except that several months later dozens of toy ducks, as well as blue turtles, red beavers and green frogs, washed ashore in southern Alaska.
News of the toy spill reached the oceanographers Curt Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham in Seattle, who study how sea currents and winds push flotsam around the globe.
January1992 in the North Pacific

14. Rubber Duckies and Ocean currents.
                                                                                                                                            
Jim Ingram (NOAA scientist)- offered a reward
He graphed and studied the data as it came in.
Hypothesis: ocean currents were moving the ducks in about the same speed and direction that the currents were going!
They put notices in newspapers along the north-west coast asking for more sightings, and over the following year received reports of hundreds of the plastic toys along Alaska's coastline. However, the sightings were useless without knowing when and where the spillage had occurred, and that took considerable detective work.
"Container shippers are reluctant to talk about losses," explains Mr Ebbesmeyer. "We spent months tracking down the ship's owners, talking to lawyers and executives, telling them we just wanted to know what the ocean was doing."
 The owners finally revealed that 29,000 plastic bath toys had been lost about 3220 kilometres off the Alaskan coast.
This rubber duck armada gave the oceanographers a huge test of their computer models of winds and currents. As predicted, some of the toys steered south and circled the entire north Pacific ocean in just three years, while many sailed up into the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia and some made it into the Arctic ocean where they were trapped in ice.
Over the next decade a few survivors are expected to be spat out from there into the north Atlantic and might get washed up on British beaches, more than 14,000 kilometres from the start of their odyssey.
The plastic ducks project was rare but not unique. Over the years, Mr Ebbesmeyer and Mr Ingraham have chalked up some impressive investigations tracking 100,000 toy cars and balloons, 34,000 hockey gloves, 5 million Lego pieces and 61,000 Nike trainers (these floated for years but were still wearable once cleaned up). Their record distance was a World War II life jacket, tracked from Australia to France. Garbage can drift at up to 40 kilometres a day.
Fascinating as these projects are, they also have a darker side. "Very little transocean trash has actually been documented, so these studies provide clear evidence that plastic blows across all the world's seas," Mr Ebbesmeyer says.

15. Toy trek
Researchers expect some 29,000 bath toys lost at sea in 1992 to make the ice-covered trek over the North Pole and to the North Atlantic by this summer.
A few years ago a large container ship bound for Seattle ran into a big storm in the Gulf of Alaska. During the storm one container, loaded with 10,000 rubber ducks, was damaged and lost overboard!
A NOAA scientist, Jim Ingram, heard about the incident and offered a reward to anyone finding a rubber duck if the finder gave him the date/time and location of each rubber duck they found.
The scientist graphed and studied the data as it came in. Eventually he made an inference (He drew a conclusion based upon the observations) and created a hypothesis that the ocean currents were moving the ducks in about the same speed and direction that the currents were going! (Incidentally, the same thing also happened to a container of Nike shoes and Jim used the same method to capture more even more Gulf of Alaska current data!)

16. The scientific method Observations Question Formulate Hypothesis
A technique for testing ideas
Observations
Question
Formulate Hypothesis
Conduct Experiment
Analyze Results
Conclusions
Discussion

17. Testing predictions
Experiment: an activity that tests the validity of a hypothesis
Variables: conditions that can be manipulated and/or measured
Independent variable: a condition that is manipulated
Dependent variable: a variable that is affected by the manipulation of the independent variable
Controlled experiment: one in which all variables are controlled
Control: the unmanipulated point of comparison
Treatment: the manipulated point of comparison
Data: information that is generally quantitative (numerical)

18. Experiments test the validity of a hypothesis
Manipulative experiments yield the strongest evidence
Provides the strongest type of evidence
Reveal causal relationships: changes in independent variables cause changes in dependent variables
But many things can’t be manipulated: long-term or large-scale questions (i.e., global climate change)
Natural experiments show real-world complexity
Only feasible approach for ecosystem or planet-scale
Results are not so neat and clean, so answers aren’t simply black and white

19. Testing predictions
Experiment: an activity that tests the validity of a hypothesis
Variables: conditions that can be manipulated and/or measured
Independent variable: a condition that is manipulated
Dependent variable: a variable that is affected by the manipulation of the independent variable
Controlled experiment: one in which all variables are controlled
Control: the unmanipulated point of comparison
Treatment: the manipulated point of comparison
Data: information that is generally quantitative (numerical)

20. Experiments test the validity of a hypothesis
Manipulative experiments yield the strongest evidence
Provides the strongest type of evidence
Reveal causal relationships: changes in independent variables cause changes in dependent variables
But many things can’t be manipulated: long-term or large-scale questions (i.e., global climate change)
Natural experiments show real-world complexity
Only feasible approach for ecosystem or planet-scale
Results are not so neat and clean, so answers aren’t simply black and white

21. Ben Franklin & the Gulf Stream Observation: Question: 1786 Hypothesis:
Test hypothesis:
Analyze Results:
Draw Conclusion:
1996

22. Coral Mapping (Molokai)

23. Mangrove Study
Do sponges affect mangrove root growth?

24. Mangrove Study Select a large sample size
Randomly divide the sample into 2 groups
Treat the groups equally in all ways but one
Observe or make measurements
Compare results

25. Paine’s study on Pisaster and blue mussels
What effect does starfish removal have on community structure?
mussels (Mytilus)
Pisaster
Paine removed Pisaster (starfish, top predator) from an experimental site but not from a control site. Kept predator out by weekly removal. 2 years.
Species diversity on control site remained constant: 15 species.
species on experimental plot went from 15 to 8. After 5 years, there were 2 species: a mussel and goose-neck barnacle
Species reduction is likely due to competitive exclusion. The limiting resource is space.
Paine repeated his study in New Zealand. Nine months after removing the starfish, the number of species had declined from 20 to 14.
Thirty years ago, probing the pattern of life among the intertidal rocks along the coast of Washington State, ecologist Robert Paine found that one species of seastar (starfish) preyed so skillfully on mussels that it effectively kept these aggressive creatures from monopolizing space on the rocks. When Paine removed the seastars from sections of the shoreline, the mussels began to multiply, crowding out limpets, barnacles, and other marine organisms from the rock surfaces. The total number of species living on the rocks dropped by half.
Paine's work was among the earliest to suggest that a single species might hold the key to both the diversity and the stability of its community. Since then, other researchers have also shown that, ecologically, not all species are created equal. The most abundant organisms, the ones that dominate space and resources or define the very character of a community, usually also contribute most to controlling the lushness of plant growth, the fertility of the soil, and other processes. Often these species are highly visible: redwood trees define a redwood forest; kelp, a kelp bed. Sometimes, however, highly influential species are less conspicuous; they may even be rare. For these unexpectedly powerful creatures, from fig trees to seastars, Paine coined the label "keystone."
Like the keystone in an arch-the wedge-shaped stone at the pinnacle that stabilizes the span-these organisms hold a community together. Their power is disproportionate, and their removal creates ripple effects that can not only change the terms of life for all others in a community but also alter the nature and vitality of ecological processes.
Despite their importance, our knowledge of keystone species worldwide is still limited. Until recently, relatively few researchers attempted to identify specified microbes, plants, and animals that play vital roles in sustaining our "life support systems," as the pioneering ecologists-and brothers-Eugene P. and Howard T. Odum called the self-renewing, life-sustaining natural processes that make our planet uniquely habitable. Over the past three decades, a growing number of ecologists have studied these large-scale processes that generate and revitalize soils, refresh the air, cleanse the waters, moderate regional weather, pollinate crops, and keep most potential pests and disease agents in check. But few have addressed whether eliminating this creature or that might alter ecological processes and thus degrade living conditions on the earth.
As global changes in land use, atmospheric gases, and climate threaten to accelerate the loss of species, the question of who is doing what has taken on increasing importance. With a sense of urgency, ecologists around the world have been assessing what is known about the role of biological diversity in sustaining our ecological life supports. And they are asking some crucial questions: What else do we lose when we lose species? How great a loss can any given ecosystem suffer before vital processes begin to falter? Can we or the species most vital to protect?
Ecologists have a long way to go before they can spot keystone species from general principles rather than through painstaking observations such as Robert Paine's. And their task is made more difficult by increasing evidence that a creature's ecological importance is not fixed. The seastar, for instance, is not a problem in areas where sand routinely washes over the rocky shoreline, burying mussels and keeping their population in check.
predation: For example, a  study by Robert Paine demonstrated that experimental removal of the predator Piaster results in near total dominance of the intertidal by the mussel Mytilus californicus excluding of other intertidal macroinvertebrates.
barnacles
chiton
limpet

26. Keystone Species Paine’s study on Pisaster and blue mussels
predation: For example, a  study by Robert Paine demonstrated that experimental removal of the predator Piaster results in near total dominance of the intertidal by the mussel Mytilus californicus excluding of other intertidal macroinvertebrates.
Keystone species are not necessarily abundant in a community. ○ They influence community structure by their key ecological niches. • If keystone species are removed, community structure is greatly affected. ○ Ecologist Robert Paine of the University of Washington first developed the concept of keystone species. ○ Paine removed the sea star Pisaster ochraceous from rocky intertidal communities. Pisaster is a predator on mussels such as Mytilus californianus, a superior competitor for space in the intertidal areas. After Paine removed Pisaster, the mussels were able to monopolize space and exclude other invertebrates and algae from attachment sites.  When sea stars were present, 15 to 20 species of invertebrates and algae occurred in the intertidal zone. After experimental removal of Pisaster, species diversity declined to fewer than 5 species. Pisaster thus acts as a keystone species, exerting an influence on community structure that is disproportionate to its abundance.
Keystone Species

27. What is difference between hypothesis, theory & law?
Hypothesis - “an educated guess”; a tentative explanation of phenomena.
Theory - a widely accepted explanation of natural phenomena; has stood up to thorough & continual testing.
Law - a statement of what always occurs under certain conditions.

28. Theories
Cell Theory
Evolution

29. Laws
Physics, Chemistry, Math- Lots!!!!
Biology: Mendelian Inheritance

30. The Blind Men and the Elephant

31. The Blind Men and the Elephant (Saxe; 1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan
To learn much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy their mind.
II.
The First approached the elephant,
And happened to fall
Against his broad sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“Bless me!—but the Elephant is very like a wall!”

32. The Second, feeling of the tusk , Cried, “Ho!—what have we here
III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk ,
Cried, “Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘t is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”
IV.
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

33. The Fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee. V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is might plain’” quoth he;
“‘T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”
VI.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said, “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

34. The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope,
VII.
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”
VIII.
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each with his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

35. So, oft in these theological wars The disputants, I ween,
Moral.
So, oft in these theological wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant
Not one of them has seen!

36. The Blind Men and the Elephant, Part 2,
They talked, those men from Indostan
While standing at the door,
Of elephants and how they looked
(This talk was such a bore!),
At last they agreed that the knowledge gained
Required something more.
II.
Perhaps each one in his own way,
Did learn a bit
Of the beast’s elusive mystery,
But just a part of it
With work, they thought, that they might see
The puzzle pieces fit.

37. ‘Twas obvious to all of them For learning to progress,
III.
‘Twas obvious to all of them
For learning to progress,
That they must share in what they found—
Jointly sort out the mess.
And seek to fully understand
Elephants, more or less.
IV.
Some worked alone and some in teams,
In both the field and lab.
Models were made: some soft, some hard
Some good, some pretty bad.
But when they pooled the useful work,
And truth they made a grab.

38. They checked each other’s methods out, Some kept, some put asunder. V.
They checked each other’s methods out,
Some kept, some put asunder.
To use the ones which passed the test
Reduced the chance of blunder.
Then they’d trust what they had learned
Of elephants’ fine wonders.
VI.
They made great strides in what they knew
Of the nature of the beast.
Of what and where and how and why
They knew much more at least.
For blind men learned how best to learn
And vision soon increased!

39. Inquiry What is the difference between a hypothesis, theory and law?
Can a theory ever be proven?
In the mangrove study, what is the dependant variable?
State Ben Franklin’s hypothesis.
In Paine’s study on Pisaster, what role did blue mussels play?

40. QUESTION: Review Which is the correct order of the scientific method?
Observation, hypothesis, testing, results
Hypothesis, observation, testing, results
Observation, testing, results, hypothesis
observation, testing, hypothesis, results
Answer:a 40

41. QUESTION: Interpreting Graphs and Data
What happens if test results reject a hypothesis?
The scientist formulates a new hypothesis.
It shows the test failed.
The scientist should be fired.
The scientist used faulty data .
Answer: a 41