observe natural phenomenon?

What does it mean? Is is similar to the hypothesis? I'm kind of confused, what exactly is the difference between 'observe the natural phenomenon' and the hypothesis? Aren't they the same..?

Here was the question if it helps:

Your pharmaceutical company thinks it has a great new headache medicine called 'PainDrain'. Design a proper scientific experiment that would effectively test the efficacy of PainDrain. Use the scientific method.

Scientific Method:

1. Observe natural phenomenon

2. Hypothesis with prediction ('if/then' statement)

3. Experiment (test hypothesis)

4. Analyze Results

5. Conclusion

Thank you very much for you time.

Comments

  • The hypothesis proposes a causal relationship between the observed phenomena.

    If you see a rainbow consistently form in rain in sunlight, then you can form a hypothesis that explains the relationships. If you form the hypothesis you can test the relationship of a water droplet and sunlight spectra and see if the experimental results agree with what the hypothesis explained would happen.

    If the drug is an analgesic then it will reduce or stop the headache pain in most patients at a dose dependent rate. Test the drug patients are given several dosage levels to look at efficacy. This test range will provide a large enough dose to work yet be safe to patients and lower levels to show the relative activity decreasing.

    The controls are a placebo and the standard headache drug. The new drug should, at a low dose, show no more effect than the placebo. A great new drug should rapidly reduce pain with fewer side effects in more patients than the current standard drug, when each are given at optimal doses.

  • "Like Shrodinger's cat, which one does not know if dead or alive, until opening the box. However, suppose one opens the box, and sees the cat is dead. Is it not amazing how man has this supernatural ability to change the status of the cat from "either/ or" to 100% dead!" Schrödinger's cat was supposed to be an absurd idea, you shouldn't take it seriously. "As Heisenberg noted, "natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; ...it exposes nature to our method of questioning." Do you realise how much power that gives to the human consciousness as opposed to ANY other method of questioning or measurement? When you observe atoms with a tool... there is a level of uncertainty in what you're observing. Moreover, if there is a level of uncertainty with atoms... there is a level of uncertainty in the tools, too made of atoms, that observe atoms. And if you measure said tool with another tool, too made of atoms, on and on and on, you're presented with an infinite regression!" And what's the alternative? The Bible consists of just atoms too, doesn't it? "But when observation meets the human mind, which does NOT consist of atoms in motion, the pattern STOPS. Because we have a soul. Microscopes do not." Do you have proof that the human mind consists of something else than atoms?

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