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Confirmatory Strategy:

• Wason 2,4,6 experiment
• 6,8,10 is confirmatory strategy for the 2,4,6 task because their guess matches their hypothesis of what the rule is.

• Characteristics of "good experiments"
• random assignment of people to groups
• teaching students to confirm or disconfirm
• representative sample

• disconfirmatory strategy: 3,2,1 (expect that the guess does not fit

the hypothesis.

Advocate of falsification: Assignment-- find out who advocated

falsification as the procedure by which science advances

Experiment scope

Is science a cultural phenomenon and should it be studied as such?

Triangulation: use multiple methods to study complex phenomena

How can the 2,4,6 task be generalized to tell us about science,

invention or design?

strengths/weaknesses of experiments vs. observations-- concerns

• variable isolation-- for experiements it is hard to generalize from

experiments to general situations.

• experiemental method is a useful tool-- is it over-used?

Characteristics of invention/discovery:

Faraday-- invention out of necessity?

Patenting as corrupting?

Michael Faraday-- discoverer of relationship of electricity and magnetism.

copious notebooks-- kept thorough records of experiments and

his attempts at invention. Tinkerer. Perhaps archetype of benchtop,

empirical discoverer.

• Invented first electromagnetic motor
• Assignment #2-- what did Faraday do with his motor?

Do patents corrupt the process of invention/discovery?

• one goal of patents-- individual gets credit for invention.
• money for grants
• Bell well-known; Elisha Gray unknown.
• Insulin-- shared credit for invention. Nobel prize.
• Secures details of processes-- protects so that they can be

sold for royalties. Wright Bros.

Disadvantages:

• details are disclosed in patents
• time limits

Telephone module

-- demonstrate principle; not necessary to reduce to practice

-- Same day Bell submitted patent-- Gray submitted Caveat

Assignment #3: Critical technology at that time (1860's - 1870's)?

-- Review of the state of the art.