Science, but not as we know it

A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they’d dump all the information they’d gathered about how each boss behaved: What potions affected it, what attacks it would use, with what damage, and when. Then they’d develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked—and to predict how to beat it.

From How Videogames Blind Us With Science, an article in Wired by Clive Thompson. This provides me with an example of the scientific method in an everyday context. The conversations between the players were available for later reading…

...the conversations often had the precise flow of a scientific salon, or even a journal series: Someone would pose a question—like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster—and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out.

So what I need now are examples of that discourse in laboratories that ‘do’ actual science.

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