zfleebin

Cynthetiq: I will agree that what you are stating is a goal of the scientific method but if you truly understand science you will know that this is thought to be entirely possible. Internal validity is the extent to which we have confidence that our manipulation caused the changes in the dependent variable. The fun is you never have full confidence because you must acknowledge the chance of making a type one error. This applies to all of science not just psychology. If anyone truly believes that they have eliminated all extraneous variables they are ignoring the foundations of science. Scientists never prove anything because they acknowledge their limitations and the possibility of error. Furthermore, there is no such thing as a hard science. 'Hard science' is just a colloquialism and a misleading one at that. There is nothing hard about science. Science is meant to be questioned and played with. If we try to say science is hard we are not recognizing our limitations. Think of it like this if I gave you a rock and told you to tell me exactly how much it weighed you could pull out a scale and weigh it right there and say it weighs this. I could say your wrong and be confident that you are because my neighbor might have a more precise scale. Still, my neighbors scale isn't as precise as a heavily funded research teams scale and even their scale isnt going to be the most precise one out there come next year. Recognizing that nobody can prove, without a doubt, how much that rock weighs or the best way of measuring it is the first step towards understanding the attitude of a scientist.