Experiment


{{Redirect|Experimental|the musical classification|Experimental music}}{{otheruses}}In scientific research, an experiment (Latin: ex- periri, "to try out") is a method of investigating causal relationships among variables, or to test a hypothesis. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empirical approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences and social sciences. An experiment can be used to help solve practical problems and to support or negate theoretical assumptions.

Controlled experiments

An experiment or test can be carried out by using the scientific method. The steps are make an observation, ask a question, form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, analyze the results, draw a conclusion, and communicate results. The reason a hypothesis is tested is so that it can be confirmed, denied, or refined, with the knowledge currently available. The test has one variable. The control is the regular group and experimental is the group with the variable added to it.To demonstrate a cause and effect hypothesis, an experiment must often show that, for example, a phenomenon occurs after a certain treatment is given to a subject, and that the phenomenon does not occur in the absence of the treatment. (See Baconian method.) A controlled experiment generally compares the results obtained from an experimental sample against a control sample, which is practically identical to the experimental sample except for the one aspect whose effect is being tested (the independent variable). A good example would be a drug trial. The sample or group receiving the drug would be the experimental one; and the one receiving the placebo would be the control one. In many laboratory experiments it is good practice to have several replicate samples for the test being performed and have both a positive control and a negative control. The results from replicate samples can often be averaged, or if one of the replicates is obviously inconsistent with the results from the other samples, it can be discarded as being the result of an experimental error (some step of the test procedure may have been mistakenly omitted for that sample). Most often, tests are done in duplicate or triplicate. A positive control is a procedure that is very similar to the actual experimental test but which is known from previous experience to give a positive result. A negative control is known to give a negative result. The positive control confirms that the basic conditions of the experiment were able to produce a positive result, even if none of the actual experimental samples produce a positive result. The negative control demonstrates the base-line result obtained when a test does not produce a measurable positive result; often the value of the negative control is treated as a "background" value to be subtracted from the test sample results. Sometimes the positive control takes the quadrant of a standard curve. An example that is often used in teaching laboratories is a controlled protein assay. Students might be given a fluid sample containing an unknown (to the student) amount of protein. It is their job to correctly perform a controlled experiment in which they determine the concentration of protein in fluid sample (usually called the "unknown sample"). The teaching lab would be equipped with a protein standard solution with a known protein concentration. Students could make several positive control samples containing various dilutions of the protein standard. Negative control samples would contain all of the reagents for the protein assay but no protein. In this example, all samples are performed in duplicate. The assay is a colorimetric assay in which a spectrophotometer can measure the amount of protein in samples by detecting a colored complex formed by the interaction of protein molecules and molecules of an added dye. In the illustration, the results for the diluted test samples can be compared to the results of the standard curve (the blue line in the illustration) in order to determine an estimate of the amount of protein in the unknown sample.Controlled experiments can be performed when it is difficult to exactly control all the conditions in an experiment. In this case, the experiment begins by creating two or more sample groups that are probabilistically equivalent, which means that measurements of traits should be similar among the groups and that the groups should respond in the same manner if given the same treatment. This equivalency is determined by statistical methods that take into account the amount of variation between individuals and the number of individuals in each group. In fields such as microbiology and chemistry, where there is very little variation between individuals and the group size is easily in the millions, these statistical methods are often bypassed and simply splitting a solution into equal parts is assumed to produce identical sample groups.Once equivalent groups have been formed, the experimenter tries to treat them identically except for the one variable that he or she wishes to isolate. Human experimentation requires special safeguards against outside variables such as the placebo effect. Such experiments are generally double blind, meaning that neither the volunteer nor the researcher knows which individuals are in the control group or the experimental group until after all of the data have been collected. This ensures that any effects on the volunteer are due to the treatment itself and are not a response to the knowledge that he is being treated.In human experiments, a subject (person) may be given a stimulus to which he or she should respond. The goal of the experiment is to measure the response to a given stimulus by a test method.

Natural experiments

The term "experiment" usually implies a controlled experiment, but sometimes controlled experiments are prohibitively difficult or impossible. In this case researchers resort to natural experiments or quasi-experiments. Natural experiments rely solely on observations of the variables of the system under study, rather than manipulation of just one or a few variables as occurs in controlled experiments. To the degree possible, they attempt to collect data for the system in such a way that contribution from all variables can be determined, and where the effects of variation in certain variables remain approximately constant so that the effects of other variables can be discerned. The degree to which this is possible depends on the observed correlation between explanatory variables in the observed data. When these variables are not well correlated, natural experiments can approach the power of controlled experiments. Usually, however, there is some correlation between these variables, which reduces the reliability of natural experiments relative to what could be concluded if a controlled experiment were performed. Also, because natural experiments usually take place in uncontrolled environments, variables from undetected sources are neither measured nor held constant, and these may produce illusory correlations in variables under study.Much research in several important science disciplines, including economics, political science, geology, paleontology, ecology, meteorology, and astronomy, relies on quasi-experiments. For example, in astronomy it is clearly impossible, when testing the hypothesis "suns are collapsed clouds of hydrogen", to start out with a giant cloud of hydrogen, and then perform the experiment of waiting a few billion years for it to form a sun. However, by observing various clouds of hydrogen in various states of collapse, and other implications of the hypothesis (for example, the presence of various spectral emissions from the light of stars), we can collect data we require to support the hypothesis. An early example of this type of experiment was the first verification in the 1600s that light does not travel from place to place instantaneously, but instead has a measurable speed. Observation of the appearance of the moons of Jupiter were slightly delayed when Jupiter was farther from Earth, as opposed to when Jupiter was closer to Earth; and this phenomenon was used to demonstrate that the difference in the time of appearance of the moons was consistent with a measurable speed.

Observational studies

Observational studies are not experiments. By definition, observational studies lack the manipulation required for Baconian experiments. Observational studies also lack the statistical properties of randomized experiments. In a randomized experiment, the method of randomization specified in the experimental protocol guides the statistical analysis, which is usually specified also by the experimental protocol. With a randomized experiment, the randomization itself provides the statistical model that is used in inference.(1)(2) Without a statistical model that reflects an objective randomization, the statistical analysis relies on a subjective model.(3)(4)Another problem is that observational studies have great difficulty attaining fair comparisons between treatments (or exposures), because the groups receiving different treatments (exposures) differ greatly according to their covariates. In contrast, randomization implies that for each covariate, the mean for each group is expected to be the same. For any randomized trial, some variation from the mean is expected, of course, but the randomization ensures that the experimental groups have mean values that are close, due to the central limit theorem and Markov's inequality. Because of the lack of randomization, it is usually the case that observational studies exhibit confounding: That is, the systematic variation in covariates between the treatment groups (or exposure groups) makes it difficult to separate the effect of the treatment (exposure) from the effects of the other covariates, most of which have not been measured. In short, an observational study lacks any warrant of probabilistic equivalency between the exposure groups. The results of observational studies are considered much less convincing than those of designed experiments, as they are much more prone to selection bias. Researchers attempt to reduce the biases of observational studies with complicated statistical methods such as propensity score matching methods, which require large populations of subjects and extensive information on covariates. See also propensity score matching, hierarchy of evidence and quasi-empirical methods.

Animal subjects

Observational studies are also used because it is extremely difficult to conduct longitudinal experiments with animal subjects. Since lung cancer takes 30-40 years to develop, it is too expensive to conduct animal studies, whose extrapolation to humans would be unconvincing, anyhow. Observational studies often suggest hypotheses whose consequences can be tested with randomized experiments or by collecting fresh data. In providing therapies for human subjects, for example in psychology or health care, it is unethical to provide a substandard treatment to patients. Therefore, ethical review boards are supposed to stop clinical trials and other experiments unless a new treatment is believed to offer benefits as good as current best practice.(5) It is unethical and often illegal to conduct randomized experiments on the effects of substandard or harmful treatments, such as the effects of ingesting arsenic on human health. To understand the effects of such exposures, scientists use observational studies.

Field experiments

Field experiments are so named in order to draw a contrast with laboratory experiments. Often used in the social sciences, and especially in economic analyses of education and health interventions, field experiments have the advantage that outcomes are observed in a natural setting rather than in a contrived laboratory environment. However, like natural experiments, field experiments suffer from the possibility of contamination: experimental conditions can be controlled with more precision and certainty in the lab...

See also

• Design of experiments
• Experimental physics
• List of experiments
• Long-term experiment
• True experiment

Footnotes

1. Freedman et alia (2007)



2. Kempthorne {{fact}}



3. Freedman (2009)



4. Inferences from subjective models are unreliable in theory and practice. In fact, there are several cases where well-done observational studies consistently give wrong results, that is, where the results of the observational studies are inconsistent and also differ from the results of experiments. For example, epidemiological studies eating broccoli and colon cancer consistently find beneficial results, while experiments find no benefit.Freedman (2009), Chapter 1



5. Bailey (2008)

Notes

1. Freedman et alia (2007)



2. Kempthorne {{fact}}



3. Freedman (2009)



4. Inferences from subjective models are unreliable in theory and practice. In fact, there are several cases where well-done observational studies consistently give wrong results, that is, where the results of the observational studies are inconsistent and also differ from the results of experiments. For example, epidemiological studies eating broccoli and colon cancer consistently find beneficial results, while experiments find no benefit.Freedman (2009), Chapter 1



5. Bailey (2008)

References

• BOOK, Bailey, R. A, Design of Comparative Experiments, Cambridge University Press, 2008, 978-0-521-68357-9, Pre-publication chapters are available on-line.
• "MEMBERWIDE">

OSCAR KEMPTHORNE>KEMPTHORNE, OSCAR, 2008, Design and Analysis of Experiments, Volume I: Introduction to Experimental Design, Second, Wiley, 978-0-471-72756-9,

• Freedman, D.A., R. Pisani, and R. A. Purves. (2007) Statistics], 4th edition, W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-92972-0
• Freedman, D.A. (2009) Statistical Models: Theory and Practice, Second edition, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521743853

External links

• Lessons In Electric Circuits - Volume VI - Experiments
• Trochim, William M., Experimental Design, The Research Methods Knowledge Base, 2nd Edition. (version current as of July 11, 2006).
• Description of weird experiments (with film clips)
• Science Experiments for Kids
• Concept Development and Experimentation
• Shadish, William R., Thomas D. Cook, and Donald T. Campbell. 2002. Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 623 p.
• Guide for Understanding and Implementing Defense Experimentation (GUIDEx), The Technical Cooperation Program, 2006
• Experiment in Physics from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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