![]() The temperature of the gas is a controlled variable. In this case, the independent variable is the gas’s volume, and the dependent variable is the pressure of the gas. On the other hand, to study how the temperature, volume, and pressure of a gas are related, you might set up an experiment in which you change the volume of a gas, while keeping the temperature constant, and see how this affects the gas’s pressure. So, for example, if you were testing a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease, the independent variable might be whether or not the patient received the new drug, and the dependent variable might be how well participants perform on memory tests. Experiments are set-up to learn more about how the independent variable does or does not affect the dependent variable. The dependent variable is the outcome of interest-the outcome that depends on the experimental set-up. In an experiment, the independent variables are the factors that the experimenter manipulates. ![]() ![]() To learn more about how this provisionality can be misinterpreted, visit a section of the Science toolkit. To learn more about provisionality in science, visit our page describing how science builds knowledge. It’s important for the public to recognize that, while provisionality is a fundamental characteristic of scientific knowledge, scientific ideas supported by evidence are trustworthy. Even worse, ideas supported by masses of evidence are sometimes discounted by the public or the press because scientists talk about those ideas in tentative terms. Unfortunately, this means that they are sometimes misinterpreted as being wishy-washy or unsure of their ideas. Because they are trained to do this for their scientific writing, scientist often do the same thing when talking to the press or a broader audience about their ideas. When scientists write about their ideas in journal articles, they are expected to carefully analyze the evidence for and against their ideas and to be explicit about alternative explanations for what they are observing. Scientists often seem tentative about their explanations because they are aware that those explanations could change if new evidence or perspectives come to light. Why do scientists often seem tentative about their explanations? To learn more about how science really works and to see a more accurate representation of this process, visit The real process of science. Teachers may ask that students use the format of the scientific method to write up the results of their investigations (e.g., by reporting their question, background information, hypothesis, study design, data analysis, and conclusion), even though the process that students went through in their investigations may have involved many iterations of questioning, background research, data collection, and data analysis and even though the students’ “conclusions” will always be tentative ones. In fact, the Scientific Method more accurately describes how science is summarized after the fact - in textbooks and journal articles - than how scientific research is actually performed. ![]() Although the Scientific Method captures the core logic of science (testing ideas with evidence), it misrepresents many other aspects of the true process of science - the dynamic, nonlinear, and creative ways in which science is actually done. The “scientific method” is traditionally presented in the first chapter of science textbooks as a simple, linear, five- or six-step procedure for performing scientific investigations.
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