What Constitutes a Correct Scientific Experiment?

What constitutes a correct scientific experiment? That’s a good question, and it’s best to find out the answer before you reach for that Erlenmeyer flask and Bunsen burner to conduct one of your own. Furthermore, not knowing the correct way to conduct an experiment can have ramifications that range anywhere from having your hard work being scoffed at by your peers…to having your lab go KABOOM!

What is a Scientific Experiment?

We have successful scientific experiments to thank for anything from the elimination of polio to AI-guided Mars rovers, to MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD. As to what a scientific experiment is, we look to Merriam Webster for the definition: 

“1. A procedure carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law. 2. The process of testing : experimentation.”

Why Conduct Proper Experiments?

Sometime in high school, college or in some other similar setting, you probably learned about how important it is to use the right methods to conduct experiments. During chemistry class and labs, for instance, you probably were taught the proper methods for conducting experiments in conjunction with learning about basic chemistry knowledge and skills. 

Unfortunately, you also know that if you didn’t conduct your chemistry experiment correctly, your results were unpredictable, unexpected and pretty much an all-around failure. You don’t get a good grade when you perform careless experimentation, and experiments performed in the real world are a lot like that, too. Rules and guidelines form the basis of whether experiments are legitimate and recognized as valid in the research community. 

Scientists, doctors, psychologists, hospitals and other entities such as the Food and Drug Administration rely on the sound research that results from these studies. Likewise, results for proper experimentation form the basis of any future experimentation that goes forward. 

Scientific Experiment Examples

There have been scores of prominent scientific experiments performed to this day. However, if you were to compare the experimental examples that led to the reality of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, to a cold fusion experiment that occurred nearly 30 years ago, you’d see the former was a smashing success (if you’ll pardon the pun), and the latter became, in essence, junk science. 

The success for the LHC was pretty amazing, also, when you realize that there was an infinitesimal chance that the LHC would open black holes on earth when they fired it up. Similarly, when they were conducting research at the Manhattan Project, they didn’t know if their wok would blow up the earth as they developed the world’s first nuclear weapons. 

What went right with projects like the LHC and the Manhattan Project was that sound design of the experiments increased success and mitigated risk. Results were repeatable with both experiments, and the super collider now continues to reproduce results using experiments on subatomic particles and with great precision. 

On the other hand, we have where the two electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons claimed they had tamed cold fusion. If they had succeeded, it would probably have been the answer to mankind’s dilemma for renewable fuel sources. Sadly, it was an abysmal failure and cold fusion remains up until now an elusive scientific unicorn that scientists continue to pursue. 

The researchers claimed that cold fusion was created in a lab, yet they couldn’t reproduce their results. The scientific community eventually came to a consensus that their effect was either inconsistent or non-existent, and that the researchers had made experimental errors. The research was summarily condemned.  

How you use these rules and guidelines or lack of during the experimentation can make or break the success of research conducted. In fact, if researchers don’t follow the basic requirements of a scientific experiment, it’s almost a miracle if the experiment works; even worse, all their work may be discounted by the scientific community. 

What Does a Sound Experiment Need? 

Part of the problem of the cold fusion research, according to scientists who reviewed the case, was that Fleischmann and Pons “had no generally accepted theory to guide them and explain the proposed phenomenon—as physicists like to say, no experiment should be believed until it has been confirmed by theory.” 

And, there you have it; the cold fusion experimenters didn’t follow the second step in the empirical method. As part of correct experiment, if you remember from chemistry class, you must follow all the steps of the empirical method.

Scientific Experiment Steps

At its core, the empirical method is a way to refine or test a theory that involves the utilization of quantitative, objective observation in a systematically controlled and replicable situation.

Scientific experiment steps in the empirical method entails:

1. Define the research’s purpose.
2. Supporting theories, along with relevant literature.
3. The creation of a working hypothesis and measurement.
4. Research design, methodology and data collection.
5. Data Analysis with results.
6. A conclusion.

High-Quality Lab Equipment

Without the proper knowledge of your equipment, you won’t know how to use your materials or figure out how to correct a mistake that could be made with it.  Because of this, you should always be extremely familiar with your lab equipment well before you try your hand at any type of experiment. Also, you should know your lab equipment and how to utilize it, not for only your experiment, but also for any errors that may occur during the experiment or after.

About Psychonaut Researchers 

As you can see, robust scientific methods are truly powerful and should be used in scientific research for the best results. Let’s look to brilliant Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman, researched the psychotropic natures of various plants and fungi, for inspiration. As you, no doubt, already know, Hoffman later isolated and synthesized psychedelics such as psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD). The rest is psychedelic history. 

Without the use of sound experimental methods, who is to say Albert Hoffman’s contributions wouldn’t have been forgotten? Amazingly enough, the work that he and other psychonaut researchers accomplished now form the basis for tryptamine mood disorder therapies being studied and developed today.