Scientific Method

The scientific method is the cornerstone of science. It's how science is done in all science professions. The scientific method consists of a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge and verifying previous knowledge, according to Wiki.

The scientific method is a series of steps that all scientists use to investigate or experiment on natural phenomena. The process uses the following steps:

Formulate a question. This is obvious. You must have a question before you can find an answer. The question could be about the natural world on Earth or about the universe. A good question is: why are plants green?

Create a hypothesis. This is the same as formulating a theory. This could be speculation about how something works or how it will function under specific conditions. To follow our example, one could say that plants are green because of a specific chemical that is green and necessary for the growth of the plant.

Make predictions based on prior knowledge or logic with the goal of setting up testing or experimentation to prove the hypothesis or theory. In our example this would result in the prediction that the green color is from a chemical that helps the plant use sunlight and something in the atmosphere and in the ground to grow.

Testing would follow the theory or hypothesis. The plant would be experimented on by attempting to isolate the green chemical using separation techniques and then chemical analysis to identify it. In our example's case the chemical would turn out to be chlorophyll. It's green and obviously has something to do with absorbing sunlight.

Analysis of the data would be the last step. The chlorophyll would be analyzed for its role in the plant's photosynthesis, or at least it would be identified as the main ingredient in the process. The chemical structure would be determined. At this point the scientific process would be cycled around again until the true role of the chemical chlorophyll was verified. The next experiments would be done to show what atmospheric gases and what chemicals in the ground are used in the process of making the plant grow. Eventually, experiments would show that carbon dioxide and water are used to form the plant's structures and emit oxygen in a process known as photosynthesis. More experiments would identify the catalysts (enzymes) and other elements of the chemical process.

Verification is extremely important. Once a paper is published in a journal about these experiments, other labs should be able to verify that the methods and results were real. This is what scientists call peer review. Once others working in the same science field can verify the results then it becomes a workable theory.
However, the theory is still not universally accepted. That takes time and a lot of work. That's how real science works, at least natural sciences. What I've described here is experimental science. Theoretical sciences use a different path.

Thanks for reading.