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Lecture 1   "What is Science?"

In his book "Broca's Brain" Carl Sagan tells the (true) story of Alexander 
of Abonutichus who lived in Greece in the 2nd century A.D. As the story 
goes, Alexander, a rather unscrupulous fellow, rushed into the marketplace 
and dramatically announced the imminent arrival of a new god. Rushing to the 
construction site of a new temple, with the crowd following closely behind, 
Alexander uncovered a goose egg that was buried in the dirt. Upon opening 
the egg, he showed the breathless crowd the snake contained within and 
announced it as the god he had prophesied. A few days later he allowed the 
mesmerized crowd into his dimly-lit home to observe the now fully grown 
snake coiled around his body. The head of the snake appeared human-like to 
those who observed it for a few seconds before being hurried along to allow 
the hordes of people to view the new god. The crowd's opinion was that 
Alexander had indeed  delivered a god. Unbeknownst to them, however, 
Alexander had placed the snake in the egg and buried it. The adult snake was 
fitted with a linen head to make it appear like a human. Alexander was no 
soothsayer. He was a fraud.

   Now, most of you are probably laughing at how gullible the crowd was, but 
are you just as gullible? A recent Gallup poll had the following revelations 
about the American public:

   1) 1 in 4 Americans believe in ghosts
   2) 1 in 4 believe that they have communicated with another person
      telepathically
   3) 1 in 10 claim to have seen or been in the presence of a ghost
   4) 3 in 4 read their horoscopes at least occasionally in the paper
   5) 1 in 4 believe the tenets of astrology are correct
     (see the winter 1991 issue of Skeptical Inquirer for more)

   It is easy to understand why we find claims like these and others like 
UFO's, astral projection, levitation, etc. to be so exciting. If the claims 
are true, they open up tremendous powers to us. But are they true? How can 
we detect the Alexanders of modern society?

   The way to detect the frauds is to employ the scientific method. People 
have the terribly mistaken idea that science is a collection of facts or 
knowledge. (Science is perceived this way because of the way it is taught - 
memorize these facts for the test tomorrow.) This is certainly not the case. 
Knowledge and facts are the products of science not its constituents. 
Science is a way of critically examining the universe around us. As such, it 
can be defined in the scientific method:

  1) Formulate a hypothesis to explain observed phenomena. The 
     hypothesis MUST be testable by experiment, and must therefore, be
     falsifiable. The hypothesis must also make predictions of new
     phenomena that can be observed.
  2) Test the predictions of the hypothesis by experiment. If the
     predictions are verified by experiment, the hypothesis becomes a
     theory. If the hypothesis is not verified by experiment it must be
     discarded or modified and subsequently re-tested. 
  3) The theory, no matter how many times it has been verified, can be
     falsified by ONE experiment that has a result contrary to the 
     predictions of the theory. If a theory is falsified, it must be
     modified or rejected.

   The above items are what define science. Note, by the way, the  
difference between the scientific definition of the word theory as  opposed 
to the everyday meaning of the word. A theory is a hypothesis than has been 
subjected to experimental verification. All claims must be subject to 
experiment to be scientifically valid. The burden of proof lies with those 
who make the claims. They must submit to tests before skeptics under 
controlled conditions that eliminate the chance for  fraud. Any claims that 
cannot be tested (i.e. only a select few are endowed with some power that 
cannot be observed by others) should set off "Alexander alarms" in your head.

Dirk