Book recommendations on the study of the scientific method.

February 3, 2010 3:10 PM

I'm looking for suggestions for books that either general introductions or academic or school texts on topics like the proper design of scientific studies and experiments, the correct use scientific method and critical thinking as related to science and the errors usually associated with these. I'm looking for books that treat these topics with a little more rigor than the average popular science bestseller. Thanks.
posted by sk381 to Science & Nature (5 answers total)

For social sciences Campbell and Stanley's Experimental and Quasi Experimental Designs for Research is awesome and is applicable to the hard sciences as well. Do not pay the outrageous price for it that Amazon is charging. So many people have used it in grad school that most used bookstores have copies for a couple of bucks.
posted by nestor_makhno at 3:17 PM on February 3, 2010

How To Think Straight About Psychology is exactly that kind of book for psychological science.
posted by parudox at 9:57 PM on February 3, 2010

Cook and Campbell (1979) is the staple:

Cook, Thomas D. & Campbell, Donald T. (1979). Quasi-experimentation: Design and analysis issues for field settings. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin

I think Nestor's recommendation, above, is an updated version. Easy to read and apply.
posted by Sutekh at 5:08 AM on February 4, 2010

"How experiments end" by Peter Galison and "Are there really neutrinos?" by Allan Franklin are two excellent histories of errors and false starts in nuclear physics.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:45 AM on February 4, 2010

For a quick review of common errors in scientific reasoning see Peter Norvig's Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation, and wikipedia's lists of cognitive biases (especially biases in probability and belief) and logical fallacies.

In medicine/epidemiology, Sir Austin Hill's The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation? is a classic.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 11:58 AM on February 4, 2010