Inductive Reasoning, Deductive Reasoning, and The Scientific Method

Question 1

organized process that scientists use to investigate
scenarios/problems and to find solutions is called the _________ ___________

Answer 1

scientific method

Question 2

What are the 6 steps of the scientific method?

Answer 2

1. Observation - Purpose/ Question
2. Hypothesis
3. Design an experiment
4. Examining and interpreting
5. Evaluating the results
6. Peer review (evaluation, publication)

Question 3

When coming up with a purpose/question, what is one of the first things you want to do?

Answer 3

Find more information about your topic of interest by asking questions like “how?’ and “why?” and researching said topic to see what other experimentations have been done

Question 4

When researching your topic of interest, what are five good available resources?

Answer 4

• scientific research articles
• Databases
• books
• search the web
• discuss your topic of interest with others

Question 5

________ is when you try to predict the answer to the problem, a tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or a scientific problem that can be tested.

Answer 5

Hypothesis

Question 6

Hypothesis is also called an _________ __________

Answer 6

educated guess

Question 7

The stated hypothesis must be __________ and __________

Answer 7

• testifiable
• falsifiable

Question 8

List the 3 characteristics of a well-designed study.

Answer 8

1. Experimental design must be detailed enough to be repeatable by another researcher
2. Control all the variables that are not of interest of the study (to eliminate or minimize the effect of variables which are not the interest of the study)
3. Experiment must be repeated to obtain reliable results

Question 9

_______________ ______________ is the variable that is changed in a
scientific experiment or a variable that does not depend on another and is not affected by the state of any other variable in the experiment

Answer 9

Independent variable

Question 10

Another name for independent variable is __________ __________.

Answer 10

manipulated variable

Question 11

__________ __________ is the variable being tested in a scientific experiment or this is what occurs in response to the changing independent variable

Answer 11

Dependent variable

Question 12

Another name for the dependent variable is the ________ ________

Answer 12

responding variable

Question 13

___________ __________ is any variable that’s held constant in a
research study. It’s not a variable of interest in the study, but it’s controlled because it could influence the outcomes

Answer 13

controlled variable

Question 14

another name for controlled variable is __________ _________

Answer 14

confounding variable

Question 15

What are two examples of negative control?

Answer 15

1. no treatment/pill
2. given a placebo

Question 16

___________ lacks the active ingredient of a treatment being tested in the study but is identical in appearance to the treatment. Thus, the participants cannot distinguish it from the real treatment.

Answer 16

placebo

Question 17

The ________ _________ refers to the situation in which patients, who receive the placebo, improve simply because they believe they are receiving useful treatment

Answer 17

placebo effect

Question 18

__________ is the practice of keeping participants and/or researchers in the dark as to who is in the control group and who is in the treatment group. They are prevented from knowing certain information of the study that they are not influenced by that knowledge

Answer 18

Blinding

Question 19

Single Blind vs Double Blind

Answer 19

• with a single blind study participants do not know whether they are in the treatment or control (placebo) group, but the researchers do know
• with a double blind study neither participants nor the researchers collecting the data know who is in the treatment or control group

Question 20

Between a single blind study and double blind study, which one would eliminate or minimize the placebo effect?

Answer 20

The double blind study

Question 21

a process by which a scholarly work is checked by a group of experts in the same field before it is published is called a ____________ _____________

Answer 21

peer review

Question 22

a ________ is an integrated, comprehensive
explanation of many “facts,” especially ones
that have been repeatedly tested or is widely
accepted and can be used to make
predictions about natural phenomena

Answer 22

theory

Question 23

A ________ can often generate additional
hypotheses and testable predictions.

Answer 23

theory

Question 24

___________ ___________ is the process of reasoning that a general principle is true because the all of the special cases you’ve seen, so far, are true

Answer 24

Inductive reasoning

Question 25

__________ _________ is where science and the scientific method and scientific reasoning begin.

Answer 25

Inductive Reasoning

Question 26

TRUE or FALSE: Inductive reasoning is not logically ‘valid’

Answer 26

TRUE

Question 27

Why does inductive reasoning have no part in mathematical proof?

Answer 27

because inductive reasoning is not logically valid

Question 28

_________ ___________ refers to the process of concluding that something must be true because it is a special case of a general principle that is taken to be true.

Answer 28

Deductive reasoning

Question 29

Deductive Reasoning

Answer 29

- logically valid - it is the fundamental method in testing scientific theories - it is a necessary part of scientific reasoning.

Question 30

Inductive reasoning is part of the _________ _______ whereby the observation of special cases leads one to suspect very strongly (though not know with absolute logical certainty) that some general principle is true. Deductive reasoning, on the other hand, is the method you would use to investigate based on _______ ________ that the principle is either true or false.

Answer 30

- discovery process - logical certainty

Question 31

An __________ is a set of statements, one of which the conclusion is supported by the others.

Answer 31

argument

Question 32

When is an argument deductively valid?

Answer 32

if and only if it is not possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.

Question 33

What does it mean for an argument to be deductively sound?

Answer 33

An argument is deductively sound if and only if it is deductively valid and the premises are true

Question 34

Positive control vs negative control in experiments

Answer 34

A positive control group is a group in the experiment that is given a treatment with a known outcome, while a negative control group is given no special treatment at all