Scientifi c Methods 327torian John Rudolph has charted the rise of a movement among educa-
tion reformers, scientists, and university educators who, amidst cold- war
concerns that the United States might fall behind the Soviet Union in
science, lobbied against elementary and high school science teaching that
targeted “the scientifi c method” as a stifl ing and rigid picture of how sci-
ence worked. Instead, they promoted a far more complex, subtle, and
informal vision, often depicted simply as exploring the world, that ex-
plicitly rejected the term and that thus seemed more likely to attract the
brightest students.^74
New ideas about the methodology that seemed at odds with any single
term also appeared after World War II in the emerging disciplines of his-
tory and philosophy of science, furthering the brittle and naive appear-
ance of scientifi c method. Thomas Kuhn’s writings on scientifi c paradigms
stressed the place of worldview and state of mind in the process of science.
To one reader, the work of Kuhn suggested that in order to truly under-
stand scientifi c method, one should look at what scientists did, not at
what they said.^75 By the end of the twentieth century, such a focus had
come to dominate the scholarly study of science, largely replacing the
notion of science as a homogeneous and universal method with that of
science as a heterogeneous and local practice. From this perspective fol-
lowed perhaps the ultimate development in methodological rhetoric: the
denial of scientifi c method itself. In Against Method, which appeared in
1975, philosopher Paul Feyerabend rejected the very notion of a singu-
lar and defi nable scientifi c method, suggesting instead that scientists did
whatever worked. In a milder form, one in which methodological asser-
tions continued to play a role as a rhetorical device for gaining authority,
such a critical frame of mind has infl uenced much of the recent work in
the history and sociology of science, helping to construct a program bit-
terly opposed by some late- twentieth- century scientists, and at the heart
of the so- called science wars.
Broadly public invocations of the scientifi c method have also contained
increased tones of brittleness, fragility, and narrowness. Vivienne Simon,
executive director of the Center for Psychological and Social Change and
a supporter of the reality of alien abduction, told a Time magazine reporter
that the goal of her organization was to “challenge the current scientifi c
method, which is to deny all things you cannot reduce to statistics.”^76
Even among defenders of more orthodox science, scientifi c method has
sometimes appeared restricted to the limited confi nes of safely scientifi c
subjects or contexts. A report on Condon’s fi ndings about UFOs in a 1968
issue of Science pointed to its widespread rejection among advocates as a
“reminder that scientifi c methods are not always able to resolve problems