The Scientific Process

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on when you happen to be listening. This is the Paul Truesdell Podcast, and I am Paul Grant Truesdell—the Elder, Senior, or the oldest of the two with this name.
Today I want to talk about something that sits at the heart of everything I do and, frankly, everything you should expect out of people who claim the title of scientist, professional, or even advisor. I want to talk about the scientific process. Not science as dogma, not science as politics, not the COVID-19 pseudo science that was pushed with government scare tactics and, yes, in many cases, outright criminal behavior. Not the kind of “research” that comes out of gender studies departments where biology gets bent to fit ideology. Not the woke science and DEI mandates that elevate slogans over data. And certainly not taxpayer-funded studies on the mating habits of extinct dodo birds. What I am talking about is science as a living, breathing system of thinking.
Let me begin with something Garry Nolan, a Stanford professor and one of the brightest minds in cancer and immunology research, said in a way that I think is worth repeating. He said, “Good science is being right today and wrong tomorrow.” Think about that. “Good science is being right today and wrong tomorrow.” Here’s the root of many problems. You, me, we, and the man in the moon often want certainty, we demand conclusions, we crave the final answer. And we want it now, with little if any effort, at no cost, and with maximum benefits. But the truth is that science, when done correctly, is provisional. And by provisional, I mean temporary—it’s the best working answer we have at the moment, subject to change as new facts roll in. It is about being as right as you can be with the data you have today, knowing full well that tomorrow better data, better instruments, or better insights might prove you wrong. And that is not a weakness—that is the strength of science. It’s well worth remembering a famous statement by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who said: “There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns—there are things we do not know we do not know.”
If you take nothing else from what I am saying today, take this: the scientific process is not about winning arguments or propping up egos. And that’s a problem. A problem that has always been around, but one that has gotten entirely out of control in the academic world, regardless of the academic or scientific discipline, both hard and soft science—but far worse in the soft sciences. It is about curiosity. It is about constantly looking for the piece of data that does not fit—the anomaly, the result that sits off the curve. I have always used the phrase “connecting dots.” It’s a simple two words with powerful impact if you think about it, and those are three words that I also use repetitively. Now speaking of Garry Nolan—he said it directly: “The advances in science come from the data points that don’t fit the model.” That is where discovery happens. If you only ever pay attention to the averages, you will never see the breakthroughs.
Now, how does that process actually work? Let’s strip it down to the basics. Here are the key words: observe, hypothesis, test, repeat. That is the cycle. That is the engine that drives discovery.
First, you observe. You notice something in the world that is worth asking about. It might be a pattern, a behavior, an outcome—anything that raises a legitimate question.
Second, you form a hypothesis. This is your tentative explanation, your best guess based on what you know at the moment. It is not truth; it is a proposal.
Third, you test. You stress that hypothesis against data, against experiments, against reality. And when the data breaks it—as it often does—you throw the hypothesis away.
And then comes the most important part: you repeat. You go back, refine your thinking, adjust your approach, and run the process again. That is how progress is made.
It is ruthless in the best sense. It is not personal. It is not political. It is procedural. And here is something people often miss: those who have piled it higher and deeper, who have spent years, decades, even an entire lifetime researching only to find out they were wrong—those people have not failed. They have given us clarity. They have shown us a pathway that does not work, which means we do not have to waste time going down it again. That is not failure; that is achievement. That is contribution. That is science doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
But there is a problem. Human beings get in the way. Yes, good old humans have a way of messing things up. And so, let’s be honest about this. Ego is one of the biggest obstacles in science. People do not want to be wrong. They build careers, reputations, and even empires around a theory. And when new evidence threatens that theory, the instinct is to defend the castle instead of opening the gates. That is not science—that is religion. That is the opposite of what the process demands.
And that same ego problem is what we saw with COVID. It is the problem with how the pyramids in Egypt are still explained. And it is the problem with those who only view mankind through a progressive lens, ignoring the reality that history is filled with both progress and regression. You see, sometimes things have, are, and will occur that drive us backwards. And by backwards, I mean this: we cannot replicate the construction of the Egyptian pyramids today. So how did so-called near knuckle-draggers, as the PhDs of archeology and history would have us believe, manage to do it thousands of years ago? That is the contradiction. That is where ego and dogma collide with reality.
Now let’s talk about tools. You cannot underestimate how much tools drive science forward. There was a time when surgery was true butchery—painful, messy, and more often than not, fatal. Smoking during surgery, unheard of, right? Wrong. It was common practice until the Mayo brothers came along in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They introduced sterile techniques and insisted on cleanliness, thus revolutionizing surgery into something survivable. Think about that: within just over a century, surgery moved from a death sentence to a discipline capable of heart transplants and joint replacements. That transformation was not because people suddenly got smarter; it was because the tools and the methods improved. Cutting open bodies has been replace more often my precision inserting of tools that clip, insert, remove, or zap, this, that, and the other. 
Not that long ago we could only look at a handful of immune cells at once. That meant entire patterns of disease and health were invisible. Then came new instruments that could measure 50 or 60 proteins in a single cell, and suddenly the fog lifted. We could see what was there all along, and science moved forward.
And so today, tools exist that dispel what is now considered junk science and outdated procedures. Those clinging to dogma, refusing to use the tools that expose reality, are the true enemies of scientific progress. And let’s be blunt—Anthony Fauci belongs in that mix, along with Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. These are pop-science performers, not truth seekers. They spew whatever line keeps the money flowing and their media relevance intact. That is not science. That is theater.
That point cannot be stressed enough. Science is not just about ideas; it is about the marriage of ideas with technology. Microscopes, sequencing machines, artificial intelligence—each new tool opens the door to questions that were once impossible to ask. The questions are always there. They will always be there. What too often does not change is our ability to apply common sense when those who are schooled ...