It was interesting to critique the work of others. I found looking critically at the experimental design and justification for why the experiment should be done in the first place to be an extremely satisfying process. While reading their work I was asking questions like:
– “Is what they say the data will indicate actually what the data will indicate?”
– “Where are the positive and negative controls?”
– “What are the dependent and independent variables?”
– “Is the design of the experiment reflective of the question they are trying to answer?”
This is going to be really helpful for my final draft since now that I have been in a critical frame mindset, especially regarding experimental design, I can go back through and poke holes in my experiment to ensure that what I say my research will indicate is actually what it will indicate.
I asked these types of questions because, in class, Dr. Massoni said that the discussion section is really opinion drive. People can oversell results and assert that they mean more than they actually do so what really matters is the raw results. This also means that if you are trying to answer a given question, then the answer to it should be extremely clear from the results alone and thus my experimental design must plan for this exactly. I should try and eliminate as much ambiguity as possible, and make sure that the results directly indicate an answer to my question, and if there are any logical steps I have to take, then they should be irrefutably supported by, ideally first-principles reasoning, but at least the consensus of a large scientific body.
This assignment also made me think of the importance of first-principles based reasoning. Taking a fundamentally, irrefutable correct piece of information and then reasoning up from there not only makes a good argument but planning an experiment that fits into this a logical, first-principles based reasoning chain, in my mind, takes as a good chunk of the opinion and human bias involved in the scientific process that Dr. Massoni talked about in class. Although, I will admit this does not do much regarding the nepotism present in the scientific publicaiton process we also talked about.
