 how to use a scientific method or process to create knowledge and at the same time to use this process to solve problems. Nowadays understanding and competency on the scientific process and how to use it is now an imperative to function meaningfully in an increasingly science-driven society. Scientific knowledge is characterized by certain objectivity. That means one has to be unbiased if you are to practice science and the products of science must be an objective or unbiased knowledge system. It must also be credible as well as reliable. These are important in the creation of a scientific knowledge so that the result will provide you a logical and reasonable explanation of what you can observe as well as provide a probable predictions of events using the knowledge system. Talking about scientific objectivity and reliability and reliability this equates to the value of advocacy, critical thinking, faithfulness to the facts that you are using and the absence of personal bias. All this must be now inputted in the different steps in the scientific process mainly and most importantly is in the problem identification and formulation. I believe that research must be problem-driven. Secondly, in the hypothesis generation as well, in the hypothesis testing as well and more importantly also in how you interpret the results of your experimental or scientific activity. Karl Popper is a prominent science philosopher of our generation and he says that scientific objectivity is freedom and responsibility of the researcher to pose refutable hypothesis meaning that the element of falsifiability is always in the content and consciousness of the researcher. This means that any knowledge system must be in the form that it is falsifiable or it can be proven false rather than proven true. He also says that to test this hypothesis without relevant evidence and to state the results in an ambiguous fashion accessible to any interested person for them to evaluate for themselves. Thomas Kuhn who is also one of our science philosophers observed however that it is very difficult to be objective. It is always in nature that we look at things within our own perspective and therefore it is theory-laden. It is almost impossible to make observation without being influenced by one's belief or theory or mindset or paradigm. As you see here, science requires you to be objective yet it is acknowledged that we have difficulty being objective because we are by nature biased in how we look at things. Walter, who is one of the professors of the University of Queensland says that all scientists are directive to gather observations from the perspective of a particular theoretical framework. In other words, we see things from our own bias eyelets. We see what we want to see. We believe in what we want to believe in and we practice this every day without being aware that we are. Citing Albert Georgi who is a Nobel awarding physiology and medicine says that to see what everyone has seen, to think no one has thought about is the way to go and practice good science. Thomas Kuhn relates this to what he calls revolutionary science and he suggests the need to question current thinking by proposing alternative thinking and this must be something that is consciously done by anybody practicing science to always offer an alternative to what we have concluded. And this lecture is about the very critical role of always having alternative paradigms in how we practice science. Critical for one, to be scientifically objective to my mind in the practice of science is equipping one with a mindset that is less blind. Being able to formulate scientifically revolutionary questions that shall lead us to formulate global scientific models with more powerful explanatory and predictive values. The aim of this lecture is to provide some ways and insights in how one can be objective in the practice of science. It is not the intention of this lecture to dwell on the philosophical aspect of scientific objective. The central thesis of this lecture is that scientific objective in the conduct of the scientific method must consistently consider and weigh the merits of alternative theories in the formulation of the scientific question, the hypothesis, in the testing of hypotheses and as well and more importantly in the interpretation of the results. This is to avoid being dogmatically influenced by what Kuhn referred to as the pitfalls of the theory-led observations. The nature of science is that the most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don't. They make and test models. Making sense of anything means making models that can predict outcomes and accommodate observation. Truth is simply a model and this is from Neil Chug-Sanfield who is an American physicist. So in other words, science is about developing models. It's about developing and knowledge systems as how we interpret what we deserve. It is not truth. It is simply a model. Now, if we look at the scientific process, the most common scientific process now is the hypothetical deductive approach and it must be in the context of this thinking of falsificationism. The alternative, of course, is the inductive approach but there are problems when we are to use the inductive approach and Hemphill in 1965 referred to the problems of the inductive approach as the Raven-Panagox. The most accepted now is the hypothetical deductive approach and following this process, there are some steps one has to follow. First and foremost, the problem and question identification formulation, hypothesis generation and formulation, hypothesis evaluation and testing to the experimentation and interpretation of the results. This is now what is most accepted protocol in the scientific process. Moving into the problem identification and formulation, the requirement is that it must be tested. What does it mean? It means it must be subject to experimentation and the indicators and the results are detectable, measurable, differentiating and discriminating. Another good example is the question, is the water hot or cold? Is this a scientific question? Can it be? It can be privately answered by different people and therefore not a scientific question. It is also not possible to design an experiment to answer the question. How to differentiate hot from cold? How to measure hot and cold? How to detect hot and cold? We now, as I said earlier, that alternative paradigms are very critical. The archaeological question, why is there an increase in the abundance of an organism over time in a defined area? And let us now analyze this in the context of alternative paradigms. We can look at ecology from different levels of integration or organization. One can look at it from the organismic point of view. We can look at it as well from the population point of view. A community point of view as well as an ecosystem level point of view. And each level has different fundamental assumptions. So if you have to ask the question, why is there an increase in abundance of an organism over time in a defined area? And if we are to look at this from the point of view of organismic framework or context, the question has to be looked at from the point of view of the physiological, behavioral, genetic, and morphological evolutionary adaptations of the organism. And if we are to compare this with the framework of population context, the question has to be looked at from the point of view of what is the intrinsic rate of the increase in population regulatory mechanisms involved in the population. Many, why is the population increasing and what are the mechanisms behind the increase? As you will see, the organismic is more looking at the behavioral, the physiological, and the evolutionary adaptations while the population context is more on looking at the system at the population level rather than organismic. Moving forward, if you are to now look at it from the community context, the issue or the question of why population increase can be looked at from the point of view of species richness in the community, why there are many species there and how it relates to population increase. It can be in the context of food work architecture, what is the complexity of the food work and how you relate this to the population increase. At a higher level of organization, one can look at it from the point of view ecosystem and how you answer this question from the perspective of what is happening to the energy level or flow in the system and the nutrient cycling and availability that allows the population increase. So this is what I meant by looking at alternative paradigms when we now look at a question in the conduct of our scientific research. Having said that, the question, why is there an increase in abundance of an organism over time in the defined area, can also be looked at from another framework. We can look at it as well from the evolutionary context. At the moment, there are two schools of thought of how evolutionary and adaptation evolved. First, schools as that organisms are subject to evolutionary forces that will optimize their fitness in their environment, meaning individuals and the population continuously evolve new properties that allow them to survive in an environment. The alternative, however, is organisms are subject to evolutionary forces, but the idea of optimization of fitness does not occur. So if you are able to interpret that question, the assumptions in the first school of thought is very much different from the assumptions that you are making when you are to adapt the second school of thought. Proceduring the merits of alternative contexts of frameworks and paradigms in the identification and formulating questions into scientifically testable form should lead one to be a critical analysis of the fundamental assumptions of one's worldview. And often, revolutionary science is attained when one goes to look at the basic and fundamental assumptions, and this is drawn when we ask questions and bring out alternative way of looking at things. In other words, having done something, one has to be cautiously always looking for alternative explanations, and this is what drives scientific process productively. By this process, objectivity is promoted, and eventually, if observed in the conduct of the scientific process, shall result to a kind of scientific model that is revolutionary with stronger exploratory and predictive properties. Moving now on to the second step of the scientific process, having discussed earlier the importance of alternative paradigms in the formulation of questions, let's now see how this can be important in hypothesis generation and formulation. A hypothesis is a possible answer to the question or a solution to the problem. The ductively generated, meaning using existing acceptable theories to explain or to provide answers to the problem or question, and these are from fundamental assumptions that have undergone rigorous scientific testing and prevailing accepted knowledge systems. There are certain characteristics of hypothesis. First and foremost, it must be testable, meaning it is supposed to be falsified. A common problem in the practice of science is that we formulate hypotheses in such a way that it cannot be falsified, and the only way, the only result, therefore, would be that it is accepted. Now, that is somehow for ourselves. We have to formulate hypotheses in a way that it can be rejected. Conditions are well-defined when to reject hypotheses. Experimental design must be in a way that it can reject rather than accept hypotheses. The word concepts that you are using must be well-defined, measurable, discriminating, and differentiating. Let us take an example. In the case of species identification, taxonomies, by experience, will have some idea, which is actually a hypothesis, of the identity of an organism, whether it is what family, genus, it belongs, or even the species being an expert in a group of organisms. After having done that, the taxonomies will pay out using a what we call a taxonomic key, which is actually a knowledge system developed by scientists themselves in the group of organisms that you are interested in. Hypothesis is accepted when the organism fits the taxonomic key in the description of the different organisms. Hypothesis on the other hand is rejected when the organism fits the taxonomic key description of another species. When the organism does not fit a known or undescribed species to science as a resulting conclusion. As you will see, parameters are well-defined. It is detectable, measurable, differentiating, and discriminating. What are the fundamental assumptions of the species concept model in taxonomy? First, species are evolving or constantly subject to change in morphology, physiology, behavior, and genetics. As they adapt to their environment, there are morphological differences between species, and these are evolutionary, stable, and consistently observable in all individuals of the species. These morphological differences, or what we call key species characters, are reliable indicators of the presence of a reproductive cup between species. And the reproductive cup is the ultimate determinant of species, at least for animals. Harry said that taxonomic species, as it is defined and operationalized, is not inclusive, meaning cryptic species cannot be detected by this instrument. What are cryptic species? These are morphologically scenic species, but are not interbreeding, and therefore they belong to different species. The species concept, as used by taxonomies, may not be functional when we have to talk about microorganisms, and to a large extent when we use it for plants as well. The point here is that the fundamental paradigm of a species, used by taxonomies, is not inclusive, and does not apply to all. If you are to search the literature, there are 126 models of what a species is. That is what we call morphological species concept, and this is based on the morphological similarities, and ignores other differences, such as DNA or inability to reproduce between individuals. There is also what we call the morphological species concept. Any group of organisms that currently or potentially reproduce with each other, there is also an ecological species concept. It defines a species as a group of interrelated organisms that occupy or adopt to a single niche. There is also what we call the recognition species concept, a set of organisms that can recognize each other as potential mates. There is also what we call phonetic species concept, a set of organisms that are phenotypically similar and that look different from other sets of organisms. Another one is phylogenetic species concept. Now, hypothesis generation and formulation must also bring to the open the relevant alternative paradigms that generated the hypothesis and are contextualized from the paradigm or framework that one is using, and I'm referring here in this example, the species concept that you are using. Now, what species concept do you use? One requires you to examine the more deeper fundamental assumptions of your framework, such as your concept of evolution, adaptation, speciation, and how you interpret natural selection, a very important mechanism in evolution. Alternative context of paradigms must be considered to maintain objectivity and credible scientific knowledge in terms of the exploratory and predictive value of the resulting scientific model and knowledge. The value of being mindful of the alternative paradigms from where the question, problem, and hypothesis are contextualized is a leading one to examine the most fundamental assumptions and understanding the working paradigm from where the question and hypothesis are based on and how this is differentiated from alternative paradigms. Being aware of alternative paradigms should lead one to identify and use measurable parameters that are discriminating and differentiating between accepting and rejecting hypotheses. The alternative paradigms should lead us to formulate hypotheses in a form that is falsifiable, as well as design experimental tests of hypotheses that clearly defines the scenario when to reject each hypothesis, both in the case of mutually acceptable and not mutually acceptable hypotheses. In closing, your assumptions are your windows on the road. Scrub them off every once in a while and the light won't come in and this is according to Isaac Asimov and to Bernard Baruch, millions of the apple fall. However, it was only Newton who asked the question of why and why probably what led Newton to ask the question is something that is quite inspiring. In other words, asking the question of why the apple fall when there are millions having seen the apple fall, probably at the time Newton asked the question this framework of looking at this world was quite different from the millions who saw the apple fall as well and this is the kind of science that we need. In school, we are taught to see things by teaching us the prevailing theories and laws of our scientific discipline. It is our hope that students after understanding these theories and laws will be critical enough and creative to provide their own original framework of how to see things, how to see the world and offer alternatives. This is, to my mind, how major discovery in science is made.