No Stupid Questions

It is, in cases where it works, probably the best available method we have for finding the truth.

But there are a lot of questions it cannot answer, it can still give the wrong result just by chance, and the results are only as good as the assumptions you made. The last point is particularly important, and can allow bias to creep in even when all the experiments are done correctly.

Finally, real scientists often do not (and sometimes cannot) follow the scientific method perfectly, due to all sorts of reasons.

Some good answers here already. Here's a useful relevant article with more info: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/

Here's a great article published yesterday on how science seems to be fueling the meaning crisis:

https://bigthink.com/13-8/why-science-must-contend-with-human-experience/

With the proviso that it depends how you define the scientific method...

One strength is it gives us a reasonably reliable way to investigate and share information, moving slowly forward with problems even though the people working on them might never meet, or even be alive at the same time.

A major downside is that (at least most popular versions of the scientific method) are designed to look at population level tendencies. And depending on the design and scale of these studies it can erase genuine differences. Let say we take a 50 people with skin rashes and give them some antifungal cream. For the vast majority of people this doesn't help, and so our study shows that it's an ineffective treatment for rashes. If we'd found a group of 50 people with rashes caused fungal infection, it would have been a highly effective treatment. So, if that's the extent of our knowledge of rash treatments we would dismiss claims that antifungals "really helped me" as quack anecdotes.

Obviously, this is the process of investigation and refinement that is part of the science. But in the interim period, when working with things that we know we do not fully understand, we have to be careful to not over privilege "scientific evidence". In a relatively new field, if one approach has "good evidence" and others don't, this doesn't mean they are necessarily less effective. They might just be less amenable to experimental designs that allows for their effectiveness to be shown, or they are effective for a specific subgroup that hasn't been clearly identified yet. (obvs, this is not meant to be taken to say any woowoo bullshit 'could' work, but that there's a whole messy middle between those two extremes.)

Researchers here. The scientific method is unbelievably tedious. Way more tedious than you would think. So much so that people are willing to pay researchers to do it for them. A simple yes or no question takes weeks or months to answer if you're lucky.

But the upside is that we can remove our own biases from the answer as much as possible. If you see an obvious difference between any 2 groups, then there's little to no point in doing the scientific method. But if the difference is less clear, like borderline visible, then biases start to creep in. Someone who thinks there's no difference will see the data and think there's no difference. And someone who thinks there's a difference will look at the data and think there's a difference. The scientific method excels in these cases, because it gives us a relatively objective way to determine if there is a difference or not between 2 groups

strength is it's replicable. Not just somebody claiming something without justifying it can happen.

Been thinking about how quantum physics are connected to chaos theory and the properties of closed dynamic systems.

Will spare you that. Part of it is the human mind doesn't have the processing of all configurations, all the possible states of an entire systems, simultaneously.

Humans do have abstract thought, critical thinking. We can observe, record data, notice patterns, trends. By chaos theory, humans discovered they could write math equations to describe the behavior of complex systems. With quantum physics, humans trying to figure out how localized realities in a system related to the behavior of system as a whole.

We use scientific method because we can't comprehend the infinite. Math equations are shorthand, a trick we use to make up for our shortcomings. Science and math is awesome.

Weakness: complete overkill for most of the problems in your life.

Weakness: better done in advance, before you even realized you needed that knowledge to solve some other problem.

Weakness: Immediate cash rewards unlikely.

P<0.05 means one in 20 studies are relevant just by chance. If you have 20 researchers studying the same thing then the 19 researchers who get non significant results don’t get published and get thrown in the trash and the one that gets a “result” sees the light of day.

Thats why publishing negative results is important but it’s rarely done because nobody gets credit for a failed experiment. Also why it’s important to wait for replication. One swallow does not make a summer no matter how much breathless science reporting happens whenever someone announces a positive result from a novel study.

TL;DR - math is hard

I bet your textbook will tell you 😉

Strength:

• Allows us to predict the future and understand reality

Weakness:

• Only works on falsifiable hypotheses
• Relies on peer review and replication which are pretty dead
• Requires a basic understanding of math in order to understand why it works

Weakness: despite its simplicity, it's still way too complicated for some of the troglodytes to understand. So now we have to contend with the idiots believing in a flat earth and that climate change isn't real.

Weakness: not usable for quantum physics/mechanics, etc where the outcome changes when the experiment is observed.