I’ve just got back from a tiring but awesome couple of days at the Science Online London conference (which—conflict of interest declaration—I helped organize). I’ll be writing up my speaker notes for the final panel tomorrow, I hope, but in the meantime I’ve just been challenged by Ruth Seeley on twitter to explain the scientific method:

I’d LOVE it if ONE scientist would take on the challenge of CLEARLY explaining the scientific method. Wikipedia sure doesn’t.

Martin Robbins took up the challenge straight away, but in the interests of clarity (and non-jargon) I’d like to see suggestions that might replace the Wikipedia entry. As far as I’m concerned, these explanations should be lay-readable; understandable to a high school student, say.

Please feel free to have a go, and then, seeing as the Wikipedia article is the first Google hit for ‘scientific method’, let’s edit the bloody thing to something more like.