8 Scientific Knowledge and Its Limits Online Quiz Questions

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False

It requires belief that every claim about unobservable entities is literally true.

It treats successful description of observable phenomena as central without requiring belief in all claims about the unobservable.

It holds that scientific theories cannot successfully predict observable outcomes.

It claims that the world exists only through scientific descriptions.

Newtonian mechanics is no longer useful because relativity replaced it.

Newtonian mechanics is more comprehensive than relativity at every speed and scale.

Newtonian mechanics remains effective for many everyday speeds and scales, though relativity covers cases where it is inadequate.

Newtonian mechanics and relativity make identical predictions in every situation.

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Making research methods transparent

Replicating results

Treating scientists as automatically free from bias

Using peer criticism and testing alternative explanations

Accuracy, simplicity, explanatory scope, and consistency with other well-supported theories

Popularity, age, and how many scientists first proposed the theory

Whether the theory is impossible to revise and has no assumptions

Whether a theory is simple, regardless of its accuracy or explanatory scope

Researchers and institutions choose which questions to pursue.

Judgments about evidence can involve trade-offs among cognitive aims such as simplicity and accuracy.

Social and ethical values can affect research priorities and the use of findings.

Values make every scientific claim merely a matter of opinion.

Values can enter only after a scientific result has been established, when it is communicated.

Researchers and institutions make choices about questions to pursue, and social and ethical values can affect priorities and uses of findings.

Social values determine the truth of scientific claims regardless of evidence.

Research priorities are selected entirely by instruments, without human judgment.

The researchers keep their methods private to prevent outside influence.

The researchers publish their methods and invite independent replication and criticism.

The researchers rely on one scientist's judgment rather than measurement.

The researchers treat their initial interpretation as beyond revision.

Newtonian mechanics has been shown to be wholly true in every situation.

Relativity makes Newtonian mechanics useless, even for everyday cases.

Scientific progress can extend predictive and explanatory reach while an older theory remains useful within its effective range.

Scientific progress occurs only when all earlier theories are discarded.

Use the model for the question and conditions it represents, and check its suitability before applying it elsewhere.

Assume the model accurately represents every detail of the system.

Reject the model because simplifying a system makes it scientifically useless.

Apply the model to any situation as long as it once produced a successful prediction.

A theory is successful only if every entity it describes can be directly observed.

A successful theory must be literally true in every claim, including claims about unobservable entities.

A theory's observable predictions are irrelevant unless its unobservable entities are proven to exist.

A theory can succeed by accurately describing observable phenomena without requiring belief in all its claims about unobservables.

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False