Tuesday, February 13, 2007

A Menace to Science

Science is a simple discipline: you set up a hypothesis, then you test your hypothesis.

You document your assumptions, methods, results and conclusions and put them before your peers for review and, hopefully, reproduction. If your assumptions are reasonable, your methods and results reproducible, and your conclusions follow from you results, it is likely your hypothesis will be accepted as theory. Not neccessarily as fact, because that's a much harder test involving standing the test of time and real world application, but as a decent theory with something useful to say about our world.

There, how hard was that?

Now read on about 'Dr' Gillian McKeith, a frequent broadcaster on the UK's Channel 4, as reported by the Guardian newspaper. Now find me the science in her work!