hua@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (Ernest Hua) (05/02/85)
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There were several articles discussing the differences between
laboratory conditions and real life conditions as well as the
validity of a laboratory experiment in reflecting real life.
Without boring those of you for whom this is intuitively obvious,
here is a brief segment on the topic.
When one creates and runs a reasonable scientific experiment, he
hopes to be able to measure all significant factors that influ-
ence his subject(s). In some cases, this is possible. In some,
this is impossible. (Some obvious limiting factors include mo-
ney, space, time, magnitude, order, precision.) For example, if
one wants to measure how fast a steel ball would fall from a 5-
foot platform, one would generally not consider air friction as
it does not contribute significant errors to the figures. It
would also be immensely difficult to do so. It is not an exact
replica of nature. But it does take into account certain impor-
tant aspects of it. (Of course, one should also take into ac-
count the possibility that hurricane winds might be present, but
this is not practical for science.)
In an experiment in which artificial mutations occur, those muta-
tions are induced in order to circumvent the time factors that
exists in nature. (It is highly impractical to simply place a
lot of flies in several bottles, and come back in 50 years hoping
they might have mutated.) In response to gripes about the artif-
icial induction of mutations: It is not the cause of mutations
that is terribly significant in studying biological evolution; it
is the mutations themselves. The methods used in the labs are
for the sake of easy observation.
In short, a laboratory is not a perfect duplicate of nature in
any sense. It only mimics certain aspects of it relevant to the
needed observations. In an ideal experiment, all significant
factors are considered. This is very different from considering
all factors great and small.
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Live long and prosper.
Keebler { hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa }