You can see some of the turtle specimens that we used in this research in The Field Museum's exhibition Specimens: Unlocking the Secrets of Life, open through January 7, 2018. If you would like to learn more about this research, the scientific paper describing the work can be found in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

For now, though, our results can be added as a piece of evidence that is consistent with the predictions of the large explanatory theory of evolution. Or they might collect data from more turtle species that shows that our results were based on a false pattern stemming from sampling too few species (we considered 47 species in our dataset, about 14% of living turtle species). For example, other researchers might develop a better model of natural selection that shows that our model was overly simplistic. In general, the shell shapes of our aquatic turtles were more streamlined but weaker than those of our land turtles, and our mathematical model of natural selection indicated that selection for streamlining was acting more strongly on the aquatic species.Īs with any idea in science, our results are open to further testing. It usually involves variables with a numerical value. It uses numerical data and statistical calculations to measure research and draw conclusions. Our results corroborated our hypothesis that aquatic turtles are forced to make more of a trade-off between strength and streamlining than turtles that live on land. Slystematic observation has been referred to as structured (as opposed to unstructured), formal (as opposed to informal), and scientific (as opposed to nonscientific) observation, and has been regarded as a major tool of science. Quantitative observation is a method of gathering and analyzing data. The theory of evolution states that the process of natural selection should work to optimize the function of an organism's parts if the changes increase the chances of the organism successfully producing offspring and the changes are heritable (i.e., can be passed down from generation to generation). That's all fairly abstract, so let's look at a concrete example involving some recent research I undertook with a group of collaborators. If it survives additional scrutiny, she may eventually try to incorporate it into a larger theory that helps to explain her observed phenomenon and relate it to other phenomena. If the hypothesis is corroborated (i.e., not falsified) by the test, the scientist will retain it. If the test falsifies the hypothesis (i.e., shows that it is incorrect), she will have to develop a new hypothesis and test that.

She then devises a hypothesis about the explanation of the phenomenon, and she designs an experiment and/or collects additional data to test the hypothesis. This inference may then lead to a testable hypothesis, which can then be tested through an experiment. An observation of the connection between two or more events may lead to an inference about the explanation for this connection. A scientist makes an observation of a natural phenomenon. An observation is typically the beginning of the scientific method. Observations lead to questions and these can be answered using experiments. With these definitions in mind, a simplified version of the scientific process would be as follows. Scientists test the ideas that they come up with using a scientific method.

Observation definition science