In a message dated 1/28/2003 4:46:21 PM Eastern Standard Time, Chris Olson - SunPS <Chrisf.Olson at Sun.COM> writes: > But I'm curious: are you suggesting that scientists the > world around use The Method as the ONLY way of research? > That doesn't sound right to me, even if it is. (And if it > is, and it can be proved to me, I'd be tempted to change my > opinion and join the other side.) Okay, just so we're talking about the same thing, this is what I think of as the Scientific Method: 1. Gather data 2. Form hypothesis 3. Devise experiments to test hypothesis 4. Compare results 5. Revise hypothesis 6. Repeat previous three steps until confident you're right 7. Publish so other scientists can try to reproduce your results and find holes in your assumptions and chain of logic, etc. I'm pretty sure this was in fact taught to me in Jr. High (with maybe a few simplifications, but that last step was present). As to your question, no, there are "scientists" who don't follow these steps, and for that reason I won't take them seriously. And to answer Andrew's comments, I expect archaeologists to try to follow this methodology too. Obviously, devising experiments is very difficult for them (and control groups are out of the question; you get what you dig up), but that just places more importance on the other steps (analysing other's data, both before and after). --KG