I liked Zeteticism as a method, but I really feel it's limitations ruin it, here's my understanding of it:
Zeteticism and the Zetetic Method
Basic explanation found here:
https://theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=ZeteticismThe mainstream scientific method involves these main steps:
1. Ask a Question
2. Do background research
3. Construct a hypothesis
4. Test with an experiment
5. Analyze data and conclusions
6. Report/communicate results
This would include theories which serve to put data and observations into an explanatory framework with predictive capabilities to determine such success. Any failure in predictions would result in either changing your model or abandoning it altogether. Due to this possibility, it can be abused with bias by altering the model’s parameters that had failed predictive capabilities to fit the data. This is a big problem with the mainstream scientific method; it allows abuse of objective experimental support to fit changeable parameters of a specific developed explanatory framework. A solution to this tendency of bias to corrupt objective inquiry is the Zetetic method.
The Zetetic method is an empirical method of basic scientific inquiry which bases a conclusion on the experiment and observation rather than an adjustable explanatory framework as fit to data (or an initial theory which is to be verified). This removes the potential bias which allows altering of your theory to match and therefore describe reality (the natural world in particular). With Zeteticism, rather than collecting data and adding them to a theory with further predictive capabilities that can be dealt with by adjusting, the conclusion to be derived relies solely on what the experiment was set to determine. Zeteticism is the system of scientific inquiry which is based on the Zetetic method, any person who practices this way of scientific inquiry is a ‘Zeteticist’. There is no ‘hypothesis’ in Zeteticism, such a step is replaced by the results of experimentation/ observation in the Zetetic Method.
The basic Zetetic Method works as follows:
1. Come up with a question about the world
2. Design an experiment
3. Experiment and collect results/data
4. Draw conclusion from the experiment
5. Communicate results to others
Such an experiment devised in accordance with the Zetetic method will require the design to include the derivable conclusions planned out. This would count as part of the experiment design, which is included in step #2.
Limitations of ZeteticismThe lack of a hypothesis or theory in Zeteticism will inevitably imply a large limit on explanation and further theoretical based understanding. Zeteticism ignores this; such concepts may likely have no basis in experimentation but rather derived from fitted data or predictions of the theory in use. This means that scientific inquiry is kept inside directly observable phenomena rather than concluding an array of past events from predictive theories.
Zeteticism misses that there may be numerous ways to represent our world. For example, I could presume a flight model that includes a flat and stationary Earth like NASA did, but presume a rotating round earth model in the case of a geosynchronous satellite (whether or not you accept that as real is beside the point). Which is correct? It depends on the purpose. 'Correctness' could only be described in terms of how we represent it, and apply our experimentation and observation.
In Zeteticism, you are faced with an observation/results that require a direct conclusion, but which can be represented distinctly by an alternative framework.
Anyways, those are my thoughts on the 'Zeteticism vs scientific method'.