Hypthesize this!

5 a.m. on a Friday morning. Standardly my day off and I sleep until at least 7. Woke up at 4. Cant. Get. Back. To. Sleep.

So let's look at number three of the Mad Scientific Method, shall we? This should be plenty interesting because I'm a bit groggy. If I work at it, I can loopy to that early morning description. By the time I'm done thinking about hypotheses I should have something completely undecipherable from a reasoned argument.

Begin.

For regular, street corner scientists, step three in the Scientific Method is:
State Your Hypothesis: After having thoroughly researched a topic, you should have some prediction about what you think will happen in your experiment. This educated guess concerning the outcome is called your hypothesis. You must state your hypothesis in a way that you can readily measure.


A prediction about what I think will happen, eh? Here's a few options:

1) I WILL RULE THE MEGAMART AND STRIKE FEAR INTO THE MINDS OF ALL WHO DARE DISOBEY THE TERRIFYING PRESENCE OF THE "DOUBLE COUPON TUESDAY GOLEM". Measurement: the crumpled faces and despondent shuffle of those left searching the isles for deals which I have already purchased at a VAST discount.

2) Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down!
Hickory Dickory Dock.
Measurement: Box of mice and access to increasingly difficult obstacles to place in way of said mice to see just how long it will take until the task is no longer acheivable for said rodent.

3) Through the use of subtle social pressure and calculated marketing campaigns it is possible to ensure that persons between the ages of 10 and 20 will begin to not only look and speak alike, but think alike, and be lulled into a false sense of material and emotional security as a result of this "community" approach. If done in conjunction with types of hazing - from sideways disapproving glances escalating up to true violent behavior - effects of this approach can last well into the persons 30s, 40s, or even up to the day they die. All efforts must include a basic discounting of things not within the prescribed approach as; "magic", "unpatriotic", "against family values", "hippy crap", "gay", "religious voodoo", etc. etc. Most important, though all are subject to the effects of this approach in one way or another, specifics about what is actually done must remain undocumented because the hardest rules to break are the unspoken ones.
Measurement: Weekends spent in the mall surrounded by all forms of humanity who, even when they try to dress differently, still dress the same.

4) "Emoto claims that when positive or negative thoughts are directed at a sample of water, and that sample is then frozen and thawed, the resulting ice crystals differ on whether the thoughts focused on the water were good or bad. Positive thoughts result in beautiful ice crystals, while negative thoughts result in ugly misshapen ones. Emoto has even gone so far as to claim that positive or negative words taped to the water container can have the same effect."
(Thank you to Polite Dissent writer Scott)
Measure: Apparently whatever Emoto wants it to be.


Scott's post brings up an interesting point. Selection bias. This is something that mad scientist across the spectrum are deeply involved in. They would never admit it, but when your method begins with a pretense instead of a supposition there is an implied desparation to prove that which you believe, no matter the cost or consequence.
This "come hell or high water" approach may be more obvious in the chaos that surrounds a mad scientist, but again I find that the line between mad and not-mad begins to blur. Just look at the recent Pluto debate and the decision of the International Astronomers Union that the public darling of the solar system isn't really a true planet because they had to come up with a new definition of what a planet is.

Miss that debate? Just Google it.

Science can get nasty. Everyone literally has something to prove, and they're willing to do whatever they have to in order to prove it. It doesn't seem at all difficult to lose a solid hypothesis to madness.

So, do I let my resolve for the mad scientific method wither under this "Aren't we all mad in our own little way" digression?

Not so long as there are worlds to conquer and bodies to reanimate in the name of science!

Next up: Step four: Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

In which we see the mad scientist completely lose it because we want it to work NOW. And there's no good reason why it shouldn't.