Kinesiology 48(2016)2:274-284Foster, C. et al.: SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY AND ITS ROLE IN SPORTS SCIENCE
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SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY AND ITS ROLE IN SPORTS SCIENCE
Carl Foster1,2
, James D. Anholm8
, Thomas Best6
, Daniel Boullosa10
, Maria L. Cress1
,
Jos J. de Koning2,1
, Carlos Goncalves5
, Chelsea Hahn1
, Alejandro Lucia7
,
John P. Porcari1
, David B. Pyne3
, Jose A. Rodriguez-Marroyo9
, and K. Stephen Seiler4
1
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, USA
2
Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3
Australian Institute of Sport, Australia
4
University of Agdar, Norway
5
University of Coimbria, Portugal
6
The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, USA
7
European University of Madrid, Spain
8
Loma Linda Healthcare System, Loma Linda, USA
9
University of Leon, Spain
10
Catholic University of Brasillia, Brazil
Commentary
UDC: 796.011:001.894
Abstract:
Scientific discovery is about a search for the Truth, for the consistent and predictable in how the universe
works. Using a particular method of inquiry, the scientific method, and with acknowledgement of the inherently
self-correcting nature of science, scientific inquiry moves forward incrementally to ever closer approximations
of the Truth. This paper reviews the history of scientific inquiry, the methodology of the scientific method,
including the necessity for hypothesis testing and development of the probability that a particular answer is
a closer approximation of the Truth than previous answers have been. It also discusses some of the pitfalls
of scientific inquiry, and areas in which the search for Truth may be corrupted.
Key words: scientific method, hypothesis, paradigm
Introduction
Truth! One of the continuing quests of humanity
is for the Truth. Although lower in Maslow’s hierarchy
of needs than breathing, water, food, personal
security, and meaningful interaction with loved
ones, Truth (knowing what is real, dependable and
predictable) is near the top of any list of human
needs. Scientific discovery, as a unique pathway
to discovering the Truth, is a critical vehicle for
accessing Truth in modern technological societies.
Indeed, the search for Truth, and the systematic
organization of experiences, may be what lead
societies to become technological. Because of the
inherently self-correcting nature of science, the
essence of Truth can evolve as more and/or better
data become available, allowing us to discard what
was once a useful point of view in favor of better
approximations of the Truth. Thus, seeking Truth
is a fundamental quality of human behavior and
is fundamentally important to the functioning of
society. Seeking Truth also represents the essence
of science, although the search for Truth goes across
other avenues of Truth seeking – intuitive, religious,
empiric, philosophical and scientific (Table 1).
Historical roots
For much of human history, Truth was defined
and delivered by religious, cultural or philosophical
traditions, through direct revelation by a Deity or
prophet, through collective cultural wisdom such
as that passed down from Father to Son and Mother
to Daughter, through what Immanuel Kant called
‘pure reason’ or through what Buddhists would call
‘meditative insight’. These versions of the Truth
were essentially defined in the writings of the scriptural
documents of the world’s great religions,
and from the giants of classical civilization such
as Plato, Aristotle and Rene Descartes (“I think,
therefore I am). Although Socrates and Aristotle
started the tradition of empirical observation (which
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Truth is a central concept in virtually all religious traditions:
1.	 “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me”, John, 8:32.
2.	 “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”, John, 14:6.
3.	 “Truth is an eternal duty”, The Mababharta
4.	 “Three things cannot be long hidden, the sun, the moon and the truth”, Buddha.
5.	 “Oh, you, who believe: have fear of God and be among the Truthful”, Quran, 9:119.
6.	 “Peace, if possible; Truth at all costs”, Martin Luther
7.	 “All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but
by the Truth”, Mahatma Gandhi.
8.	 “Speak the Truth, do not yield to anger, give if thou are asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods”,
Confucius
Truth is a central concept of philosophical systems:
9.	 “The least initial deviation from Truth is multiplied later a thousand fold”, Aristotle
10.	 “The object of the superior man is Truth”, Confucius
11.	 “Every Truth has two sides, it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either”, Aesop
12.	 “The words of Truth are always paradoxical”, Lao Tzu
13.	 “Even if you are a minority of one, the Truth is the Truth”, Mahatma Gandhi
Truth is a central concept of literary thought:
14.	 “The Truth is rarely pure, and never simple”, Oscar Wilde
15.	 “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me the Truth”, Henry David Thoreau
16.	 “Beauty is Truth, Truth is beauty, that is all ye need to know”, John Keats
17.	 “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the Truth”, Arthur Conan
Doyle
18.	 “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and Truth”, Leo Tolstoy
Truth is a central concept of political thought:
19.	 “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” U.S Declaration of
Independence
20.	 “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself”, Thomas Jefferson
21.	 “He who knows nothing is closer to the Truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood”, Thomas Jefferson
22.	 “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge Truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people”,
John F. Kennedy
23.	 “For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost; I am willing to know the whole Truth, to know the worst and provide
for it”, Patrick Henry
24.	 “Half a Truth is often a great lie”, Benjamin Franklin
25.	 “The Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may attack it, but in the end, there it is”, Winston Churchill
26.	 “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the Truth, they can be depended on to correct any national crisis. The great
point is to bring them the real facts”, Abraham Lincoln
Truth is the most fundamental grounding of legal traditions:
27.	 “Do you swear to tell the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Truth is a common element of popular culture:
28.	 “The Truth is out there”, the X-Files
29.	 Of investigative journalists who badger their interviewees for ‘the Truth’.
30.	 Of the so-called conspiracy theories, which widely assume that the Truth is being distorted or hidden by some sort of
authority figure.
The search for Truth is, and has been a common, consistent and essential element of scientific inquiry:
31.	 “All Truths are easy to understand once they are discovered, the point is to discover them”, Galileo Galilei
32.	 “To myself, I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of Truth lie undiscovered before me”, Isaac Newton
33.	 “The pursuit of Truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives”, Albert
Einstein
34.	 “Anyone who doesn’t take Truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either”, Albert Einstein
Table 1. Searching for Truth in many avenues of human experience
is a central technique in scientific inquiry), they are
mostly remembered as ‘reasoners’. Even Pythagoras,
the mathematician, was as much a mystic in
search of the mysteries of life as of mathematical
proofs. The combination of Aristotle’s ideas with
scholasticism (the dogma defending method of
critical thought that grew out of medieval Christian
monasteries which did a reasonable job of
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preserving classical knowledge during the Middle
Ages) probably delayed later growth of observational
science.
Beginning in ancient Babylon and Egypt,
continuing through the grand intellectual periods of
China and the Arabic world (during which Europe
was mired in the middle ages), and emerging in
Europe in the 15th
century Renaissance Italy, a
tradition of empiricism (knowledge that comes
from sensory experience) began and matured into
what we recognize today as the Scientific Method.
Much of the growth of empirical, observation-based
science depended on improved or completely new
instrumentation designed and built by early scientists/artisans.
They combined a systematic approach
to observation with their own technological innovations
and craftsmanship to achieve fundamentally
different and more accurate observations
than were possible with the unaided human senses
alone. For example, central observational discoveries
in astronomy and biology would not have been
possible had Galileo not recognized the value of
the telescope to test the observational hypothesis of
Copernicus of a heliocentric universe, as opposed
to the geocentric universe of Ptolemy. Similarly,
had Antonie van Leeuwenhoek not developed the
microscope, which revealed a previously unseen
microscopic world coexisting and co-locating (on
our skin and even inside our own bodies) with our
macroscopic world, our view of biology would have
been fundamental more short-sighted.
Central to the emergence of the Renaissance
was the often glaring mismatch between the Truth
(vigorously defended by the Church), and the
observations being made by a remarkable series
of polymaths, including da Vinci, Copernicus,
Galileo, Michelangelo. The discovery of the New
World (which in the ‘flat earth’ view simply was
not supposed to be there) added more fuel to the
Renaissance fire. Later work by William Harvey,
Newton, Darwin, Hubble, Einstein and (even more
recently) Watson and Crick have progressively
refined our view of the universe. These findings
challenged much of the accepted Truth, associated
not only within the Catholic Church and other religious
traditions, but also within ancient wisdom
represented by Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy and
Descartes.
Accessing the Truth by empirical means is
limited by our sensations and perceptions (observational
ability). To Copernicus, who could only
watch and measure the stars move with his eyes, the
empirical detail available from contemporary space
telescopes that can see with remarkable magnification,
in wavelengths not visible to the human eye,
and from locations remote from the Earth, would
border on the magical. As of today (2016), the
Scientific Method still depends on amplification of
our ability to make inference through perceptions.
Perhaps there are vehicles for allowing systematic
approaches to the Truth what would be as hard to
conceive for us as a gamma ray orbital telescope
would have been for Copernicus. Only time will
answer this for us.
Roger Bacon, who can arguably be called the
father of the Scientific Method, made his foundational
arguments about the necessity for repetitive
observations and experimental verification with
carefully described methods. This led to the central
concept that Truth can never be absolute, but should
be described in terms of probabilities. This fostered
the development of scientific skepticism (which
denies or doubts the possibility of the certainty of
knowledge), and gave birth to an ever-growing and
maturing framework of observational and experimental
methods of accessing Truth. Central to this
entire process was the recognition that Truth is not
always universally true, as in “my Grandfather said
this is so”, or “the Bible tells me so”, but depends on
the ability to improve our understanding by gathering
and integrating ever more information. This is
not to say that other avenues (religious, philosophical,
cultural) of acquiring the Truth are not of great
value. Science simply recognizes that the nature of
Truth is based on the totality of what we know and
can observe, thus being uniquely self-correcting.
The Scientific Method
Just as the ability to gather data evolved with
mathematics and technological innovation, the
concept of how to approach a search for the Truth
has also evolved. The Scientific Method can be
described as the process by which science (a certain
way of searching for the Truth) is carried out. The
goal of scientific inquiry is to obtain knowledge in
the form of testable explanations that can predict
future empirical (observational or experimental)
observations.
The Scientific Method is iterative; building
continually upon previous knowledge, on Newton’s
concept of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’. At
the beginning, science may rely on simple observations
(e.g. shepherds watching the pattern of stars
– including the strangely moveable stars – in the
sky, and trying to explain what they saw). Sometimes
observations depend on serendipity (making
a one-time observation by pure chance, often while
looking to explain something else, and then having
the sagacity – wisdom – to place the observation
into context with what else is known; hence the
truism “chance favors the prepared mind”). Science
then relies on developing a provisional explanation
for observations (whether designed or planned).
The term for developing a provisional explanation
is called forming a hypothesis (best guess is probably
more accurate), which makes predictions of
what should happen in a certain situation (if what
we think is true, what would be the next thing to
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happen?), and then making observations/experiments
to test the accuracy of the predictions. Statistical
analyses define the probability or chance (or
likelihood in the jargon of newer inference-based
statistics) that the observed results happened for
the reason you expected them to happen, and if
the magnitude or size of an effect/result is likely
to recur if similar conditions are repeated. The
essentially skeptical nature of scientific inquiry
argues that regardless of any set of results, there
can never be absolute certainty regarding the Truth.
What you get is progressively better approximations
of the Truth and reductions in the magnitude
of uncertainty about a topic. In essence, the use of
the Scientific Method can lead only to support or
non-support for hypotheses, never proof. Even the
best supported hypothesis, for example Newton’s
laws of motion, required modifications as better
evidence became available, often only because of
technological innovation.
Science is also geared toward seeking simplicity.
One of the ultimate tests of any set of scientific
observations is whether they are parsimonious
(simple). The concept of Occam’s Razor is never
far from the vocabulary of science. Sir William of
Ockham, a 14th
century priest and scholastic (one
of those scholastic guys who held back the progress
of empirical science) suggested that if there were
several ways to explain a set of observations, the
most simple (parsimonious) was the most likely
to be true. You have to have the verbal ‘flip-flop’
skills of a contemporary politician to use science,
because “changing your mind” is dependent only
on the next set of data. In science uncertainty is a
normal condition and you will always, eventually,
change your mind.
Science versus religion, politics and
business
If a hypothesis is supported, systematically,
over a number of observations or experiments,
the state of understanding about that topic can be
expressed as a theory. Theories are nothing more
than well-supported hypotheses. There does not
seem to be a “magic number” of supportive studies
required to convert a hypothesis into a theory, some
hypotheses just seem to increase in stature until
suddenly it is a theory. Science has an extremely
strong track record for producing theories that ultimately
improve the human condition through the
technologies, methods and treatments that emerge.
Science is also very good at showing what does
not work so well. Consider the advances in medicine
in just the last century to understand how our
viewpoints can change with better data (Frosch,
2007; Pierach, Wangensteen, & Burchell, 1993).
Unfortunately, science has also historically been
seen as a threat to the status quo, particularly in
matters of religion (which argues that revealed
Truth is universally unchanging), politics (which
argues that Truth is always negotiable) and business
(which often finds the Truth inconveniently getting
in the way of a short-term profit). This has resulted
in extremely strong resistance to even the most
well-founded scientific theories; resistance that is
as evident today as when the Pope forced Galileo to
recant his views of the heliocentric universe.
A contemporary example of such strongly
supported, yet strongly resisted theories might
include the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution
has been supported by observations and experimental
studies spanning the last 150 years, but still
is not fully accepted. The resistance is primarily
attributable to evolutionary theory contradicting
religious concepts of a discrete creation by a Diety,
over a very short period of time, with humans
uniquely, and properly, situated at the pinnacle of
creation, versus the concept that life has evolved
over a very long period of time, and that humans
are just another product of the evolutionary process.
Another contemporary theory would be that of
global warming secondary to the impact CO2 accumulation
from human activities. Increasing atmospheric
CO2 concentrations are clearly observable.
So is a steady increase in global temperature over
the last century or more. Both are very likely attributable
to fossil fuel use and deforestation caused
by humans. Although overall global warming is
the net result, the theory also predicts that weather
may become more extreme locally, including cold
weather. This theory faces disproportionate resistance
despite the growing evidence in its support,
primarily because its implications could be costly for
industries in both developed and developing countries.
Theories defining the relationship between
tobacco smoking with cardiovascular disease and
cancer risk were resisted for decades by a powerful
one-two combination of tobacco industry lobbyists
(often with their own paid-for-scientists) and
tobacco grower friendly politicians. Fortunately,
over the last decade, the sheer weight of evidence
has forced recognition of the harmful health effects
of tobacco use, and the institution of anti-smoking
laws in much of the developed world. Unfortunately,
the same business forces have promoted tobacco
use in the less scientifically conversant developing
world. Profit is, after all, profit, and Truth should
not get in the way of profit!
Rules of engagement
Science differs from other ways of accessing
the Truth in three unique ways. First, science absolutely
relies on the process of forming and testing
hypotheses. Anyone can have an idea about what
causes something to occur. To use science, you
have to be willing to test the hypothesis. And,
most critically, you have to be just as satisfied if
the test shows that your hypothesis is wrong. You
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are looking for Truth, not validation of your rightness.
Second, science relies on verifiability. You
have to be comfortable having someone else testing
your hypothesis, and showing that you are incorrect.
Science is a process which recognizes that progress
comes from a process that can reject or modify
incorrect ideas. Third, science is self-correcting.
Although some concepts are very persistent, few
scientifically derived findings remain ‘true’ forever.
If a theory stands the test of time over a very large
number of attempts to show that it is wrong, the
hypothesis-theory can become a law. But even a
well-established scientific law can be cast aside
under the weight of new evidence. For example
Newton’s laws of motion still work remarkably for
explaining most of what we observe in the physical
world, 400 years after their emergence. But, we now
know that Newton’s laws are unsatisfactory at the
level of the very small (atoms) and very large (solar)
systems. Indeed, Einstein used changes in the orbit
of the planet Mercury to demonstrate that his theory
of relativity (a hypothesis at the time) better fit the
data about how Mercury moved than did Newton’s
laws of motion. Even the venerable Einstein had to
wait a couple of decades before other scientists were
able to make observations during a solar eclipse
that supported his prediction of gravity bending
light waves, a critical prediction in his theory of
relativity. If one thinks that Truth has finally been
achieved, that all the information about a topic is
known, that there is nothing to be further discovered
about an issue, then one simply is not prepared
to do science.
On the other hand, religion, which is one of
the classical methods of seeking Truth, believes
that new evidence is not necessary, that much (if
not all) all of the relevant evidence has already
been ‘revealed’. One only has to read Hebrews
11:1 in the Christian New Testament “now faith is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen” to understand that the fundamental
approach to seeking the Truth is through faith in the
correctness of scriptures, delivered (or inspired) by
a Deity. While this is a specific example from the
Judeo-Christian tradition, the same basic idea is
pervasive in religious documents from many traditions.
While not minimizing the wisdom provided
in the writings of religious traditions, the fact is
that the fundamental approach to seeking Truth is
inherently different from that of science. Science
absolutely relies on the observable (or at least the
potentially observable). It does raise a larger question
of whether science is capable of answering all
questions, even ones that cannot be answered today.
Are there questions beyond the reach of science that
can only be addressed by non-empirical methods
(e.g. faith in the correctness of inspired texts, the
non-linear possibilities of meditative insight)? If
scientific ‘proof’ is impossible, it seems likely that
there are also questions that cannot be answered
using the method of testing hypotheses. However,
observational ability changes greatly over time. For
example, would van Leeuwenhoek have understood
the possibilities of a scanning electron microscope?
Scientific versus technological
Because science is both a driver of technological
development, and facilitated by technology,
there is a tendency to equate the term scientific with
technological. That is simply not the case. Scientific
refers to a method of thinking, a way to trying to
understand the world, an avenue for approaching
the Truth. It has very little to do with the use of a
sophisticated piece of hardware. Science sometimes
is helped by technology, because technology can
make better observations possible. But, in many
cases, science can be done with only a minimum
of technology, or none at all. For example, in sports
science research, you could learn a lot about the
exercise training response by simply having
someone run a certain distance as fast as possible,
giving them a training program that you hypothesize
is superior to some conventional (or control)
training program, and seeing how much faster they
run after a reasonable period of training (Foster,
Daines, Hector, Snyder, & Welsh, 1996; Sylta, et
al., 2016). The most advanced technology required
might be a good stopwatch or perceived exertion
scale. Alternatively, you could perform a muscle
biopsy, make measurements of molecular markers
of gene expression and gauge the rate of synthesis of
new proteins that should be associated with running
faster (Yeo, et al., 2008). The two approaches are
quite different in terms of technology, but equally
scientific. Although your understanding of the
training response might be much more complete
after using the more technologically sophisticated
approach, the fundamental answer to your question
would be the same, although one always has to be
aware of the signal-to-noise ratio when complex
technologies are used to answer questions.
One of the overriding elements of the scientific
method, in some ways superseding both theories
and laws, is the concept of a paradigm. Well developed
in the classic book The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (1962), the paradigm
can be thought of as the fundamental way
of thinking about scientific data; indeed, the paradigm
often defines the way in which scientific questions
are asked. Because of the pervasive nature of a
scientific paradigm, changes are very often hard to
make. In Kuhn’s view, paradigm shifts are equivalent
to political revolutions in terms of how strongly
the protagonists and antagonists interact. In sports
science, for example, the recent battle between
the cardiovascular/anaerobic model (Mitchell &
Blomqvist, 1971) and the central governor model
(Noakes, St Clair Gibson, & Lambert, 2004), or
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between the central governor model and the psychobiological
model (Amann, et al., 2008; de Koning,
et al., 2011; St Clair Gibson, et al., 2006; Tucker,
2009) are good examples.
Early proponents of ideas that challenge an
existing paradigm are often treated badly, with
derision and (more importantly) with difficulty in
publishing their data or securing funding for their
research. One classical example is the concept of a
heliocentric, rather than a geocentric solar system.
Nicholas Copernicus first articulated the heliocentric
hypothesis in 1543. However, he actually
delayed publishing his results until just before his
death, because he knew he would be branded a
heretic by the Church. Galileo, the central figure
in terms of making the early observations (in 1610)
in support of the Copernican hypothesis, had enormous
trouble with the Church, and was at least for
a time obligated to recant his viewpoint that the
Copernican model was correct. The Church burned
heretics at the stake back in those days! Darwin
reportedly delayed publishing his defining work, On
the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection
for some years because he knew the results
would be controversial and strongly resisted by the
Church. Challenging paradigms is dangerous busi-
ness.
In more contemporary times, the view that
atherosclerotic disease was inherently progressive,
and that once a person had atherosclerotic cardiovascular
disease, they were essentially doomed to
a progression of symptoms, presented the dominant
paradigm relative to our understanding of cardiovascular
disease for many years. Many drug therapies,
and even bypass surgery and angioplasty (with
or without stents), are grounded in the fundamental
assumption that the underlying disease cannot be
treated effectively. The lesions can be squashed, the
diseased artery can be bypassed, the demands of the
heart on the coronary circulation can be decreased,
but the fundamental atherosclerotic lesions were
supposedly doomed to worsen progressively. An
early proponent of the concept that atherosclerotic
lesions were malleable and that the atherosclerotic
processes could be reversed was Nathan
Pritikin (Pritikin & McGrady, 1979). In the 1970’s,
Pritikin (a self-taught innovator, who was not medically
trained) suggested that if the risk factors for
atherosclerotic disease (particularly serum cholesterol)
were changed in a dramatic way, that cholesterol
deposition in the arteries could be reduced,
effectively reversing the atherosclerotic disease
process. Pritikin was not treated well. In fact, he
was widely viewed as something of a ‘crackpot’. I
can remember visiting Pritikin’s Longevity Center
in 1979, as part of a tour organized for attendees at
the American Heart Association meeting. We were
served a meal, about which one of my colleagues (a
co-author of this text) who happened to be a vegetarian,
remarked “I’d rather have heart disease
than eat like this”. Later, Pritikin took the stage
and announced to the audience his goal of “getting
enough funding to do research and proving that
this approach works”. In the moment, he lost much
creditability, as the skeptical nature of science
pretty well dictates that proving anything is basically
not possible. Later, of course, basic science
research about cholesterol receptors by Brown and
Goldstein (1985) (who earned the 1985 Nobel Prize
for medicine), translational work on the effect of
cholesterol lowering drugs on the course of atherosclerotic
disease, and applied clinical research
(Hambrecht, et al., 1993, 2004; Haskell, et al., 1994;
Ornish, et al., 1998) demonstrated (not proved) that
the concept that atherosclerotic disease could be
reversed was fundamentally correct. Accordingly,
although many of the treatment strategies for coronary
heart disease are still grounded in the concept
that atherosclerotic disease is inherently progressive,
the presence of lifestyle modification recommendations
and the widespread use of statins and
exercise in the population attests to the reality that
the paradigm is changing.
Historically, fatigue during exercise was thought
to be attributable to a failure of the muscle to be able
to respond to stimulation, secondary either to the
accumulation of waste products produced during
muscle contraction or to depletion of metabolites
necessary for generation of ATP necessary to drive
muscle contraction. However, a variety of observations
relating to what has come to be called ‘pacing
strategy” (Foster, et al., 2012) demonstrated that
muscular power output in humans almost never
falls to zero during even the most fatiguing exercise,
as it does in tissue preparations and denervated
limbs. Lead by the observations of Ulmer
(1996) that spontaneous exercise behavior could
be described by a concept called ‘teleoanticipation’,
which required both an anticipation of how
hard to perform a task and feedback from the
periphery about the magnitude of homeostatic
disturbance resulted in broader concepts such as
the central governor theory (Noakes, et al., 2004),
exercising with ‘reserve’ (Swaart, et al., 2009), and
the ‘anticipatory-feedback model’ (Tucker, 2009).
These hypotheses have supported the theory that
there is a two-way dialogue between the conscious
brain (where activity is conceived and organized),
and feedback from the muscles (which act semiconsciously,
to modulate the central motor drive).
Interfering with the feedback mechanism(s) can
lead to a short term increase in muscular power
output, at the expense of a more profound disturbance
of homeostasis in the muscle, conditions
more like that described in the classical work of
muscle fatigue in the absence of an intact nervous
system (Amann, et al., 2008). Thus, the paradigm
of fatigue has evolved from a unidirectional, muscle
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condition dependent decrease of muscle power
output into a tightly integrated, two-way signaling
dependent process, which may depend on post-activation
potentiation as a confounder of fatigue (Del
Rosso, et al., 2016). But, the process has taken 30
years, and has involved an appreciable amount of
conflict amongst proponents of different views of
fatigue.
Types of science
In a general sense, scientific investigation can
be fractionated into three broad categories. All
are science, all rely on empirical observations, on
forming hypotheses, on making predictions about
the outcome of subsequent observations or experiments,
and on using statistical tools to decide
whether a hypothesis is supported or not supported.
All are absolutely dependent on the self-correcting
nature of science to allow evolution of theories and
laws. All recognize that achieving ‘proof’ (absolute
certainty) is not possible.
In the biological sciences, scientific endeavor
can be thought of as a continuum of atom-molecule-cell-tissue-organ-organism-population.
Any of
the subsequently discussed varieties of science can
be concerned with any level of organization. Basic
science is more often concerned with the behavior
of units at the cellular level or smaller. Translational
science is more often applied at the tissue-organ
level of organization. Applied science is almost
always concerned with events occurring at the level
of an organism-population. Basic science is about
the process of discovery, about acquiring comparatively
isolated (some people say reductionist) sets of
information, without regard for whether the information
has any particular short-term usefulness.
The process of basic science without an underlying
theory was referred to as “Chaos in the Brickyard”
(Forscher, 1963) in one of the classic editorials about
the process of science. Countering this notion is
that other varieties of science absolutely depend on
the fundamental knowledge created by the process
of basic science. However, it is sometimes hard to
anticipate what is likely to become useful and what
will become isolated information, unlikely to be of
further use. Translational science is a stage between
basic and applied science. It is probably fair to
think of translational science in terms of ‘bench to
bedside’ or ‘test tube to track’. Translational science
most often works at the level of tissue-organ, but
can more properly be thought of as an approach that
tries to find the context, and the likely connection
between basic and applied science. Applied science
is about finding how information discovered at the
level of basic and translational science fits into the
behavior of an organism (a person) or a population
(a group of people).
Within the continuum of science, we have to
consider relative merits of observational vs. experimental
(e.g. interventional) science. Observation
requires a certain amount of good luck (comets
running into planets, elite athletes achieving world
records, patients catching a rare disease), but have
the advantage of occurring ‘in context’. Experimental
studies (including meta-analyses, systematic
reviews and randomized clinical trials that are the
hallmark of “A level” evidence in medical science)
are valuable because of their ability to control extraneous
variables. But, with many interventions in the
real world (for example the frequency, intensity and
time of an exercise program), it is rare that only a
single variable is operating. All things being equal,
experimental studies are stronger evidence, because
there is a certain amount of “control”, but this often
happens at the expense of a real world context. Likewise,
particularly in the medical sciences, one has
to be aware that prospective studies (studies you
planned to do from the start) typically generate
much stronger evidence than retrospective studies
(data you happened to have which allowed a question
to be addressed). Published studies can even be
combined, using carefully defined statistical tools
into ‘meta-analyses’ which allow an increase in the
statistical power of isolated individual studies.
A brief strategic detour and humorous
diversion
Science is done by scientists, people who use
a rather specific way of seeking the Truth about
how the universe behaves. Scientists are people who
make observations, formulate hypotheses (guesses)
about what is happening, make predictions about
what they are going to see next, perform observations
or conduct experiments to test the accuracy
of their hypothesis-driven predictions, and then
analyze the derived data to define the probability
that what they saw is indeed what they think they
are seeing. That is concisely true, but it may not be
the whole truth.
How does one get to be a scientist? We propose
(tongue in cheek) that many people who are destined
to become scientists are people in grown-up bodies
who are, in fact, still 6-year-old children. What do
6 year olds do? They ask questions. Specifically,
they ask the question ‘Why?’ They ask ‘Why’ a
lot! Of course, their parents patiently answer their
questions, to which they again ask “Why?” To
which their parents again patiently answer, to which
there is yet another “Why”, ad infinitum. Grown
up 6-year-old children also like big words. When
I (CF) was young, I had a friend named Jim Viets.
Jim was one of the smartest kids I knew, and could
say stegosaurus with perfect pronunciation. At that
age, my lack of front teeth (and the fact that I did
not know very much of anything about anything)
made ‘stegosaurus” uniquely difficult. These days
the word might be ‘transcriptional regulation’ or
‘gene expression’, but the ability to say words that
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other people do not know the meaning of, or cannot
pronounce, is something that came with us from
age 6. When I was a kid, I used to love show-andtell.
I got to stand at the front of the class, and talk
about something that only I (and perhaps my mom)
really cared about. The teacher insisted that all the
other kids had to be polite, and to ask me questions
afterwards. That was show-and-tell. What
are the posters and free communications at professional
society meetings, like the American College
of Sports Medicine (ACSM)? They are show-andtell
for 6-year-olds who have never quite grown up,
and who still have a fondness for taking the stage
and sharing what they know? Precocious 6-yearolds
also like to be in charge. When I was in first
grade, there was a kid in class named Richard
Strickland. Richard was the ‛classroom monitor’.
That meant that he got to take the attendance slip
from the teacher to the principal’s office every day,
an important task for a 1st
grader. I can remember
Richard walking across the classroom every day.
He had the Richard Strickland walk, then he turned
his head and gave the class the Richard Strickland
grin, and showed the Richard Strickland attitude.
He was the classroom monitor. I hated him! Later I
grew up to be President of ACSM and the Editor of
the International Journal of Sports Physiology and
Performance; so I have had my Richard Strickland
moments too. Wanting to be in charge is universal
for 6-year-olds. When I was 6-years-old, I lived in
Ft Worth, TX. Just before Christmas my parents
would take me to the Montgomery Ward department
store to look at toys. I could not say Montgomery
Ward, so to me it was ‘Monkeywards’. But, I still
loved the toys. I would sit on Santa’s lap and tell
him what I loved the most. Today, the exhibit hall at
the ACSM Annual Meeting is where I get into the
mood to ‘talk to Santa’. A new gas analyzer, or mass
spectrophotometer, or gene splicer is essentially a
“toy” to a grownup who is still a 6-year-old inside.
After returning from ‘Monkeywards’, I would start
making my ‘good kid list’, things I could do to make
my mom and dad happy. Even though I still nominally
believed in Santa Claus, I was already observant
enough (a budding empiricist) to have figured
out that Santa seemed to bring me more toys when
my folks were really happy. What do you think
grant proposals are? They are ‘good kid’ lists for
grown up Professors? If the American Heart Association
will only give me a lot of money, I can rehabilitate
people from heart attacks faster than ever
before! When I was 6 years old, the teacher would
give out gold stars for particularly good work. I
was a smart kid, and got gold stars almost every
day. I would occasionally even get blue or red stars,
which were for especially good work. However, I
never got a ‘green star’. Those were reserved for the
super bright kids, like Jim Viets and Richard Strickland.
What are the awards that professional societies
give? They are gold, blue, red and even green
stars for grown up 6-year-olds? So, science, for all
its elegance, and much of its pretensions, is basically
something that is done by overgrown 6-year-old
kids, who kept asking “Why?”. However, instead
of relying on mom and dad, and a couple of favorite
aunts and uncles, for the answers, the kids who grew
up to be scientists developed skills to find out for
themselves. Science is about human curiosity! The
best scientists are curious people, always wondering
why something happens, or if there is a better way
of explaining what has happened. The best scientists
are those who ask the most clever questions,
who find the most elegant (not necessarily the most
technically sophisticated) way to answer questions.
Similarly, as teachers, we are constantly
reminding ourselves (and each other) that fostering
this kind of 6-year-old’s curiosity is much more
important than conveying facts. If we foster curiosity
in our students, and encourage them to go find
answers for themselves, then we will be remembered
as great Professors. If we allow curiosity to
die, or even worse, if we kill it, then we should not
be remembered at all. Instructively, the TED Talk
winner from 2013, Sugata Mitra, “Building a School
in the Cloud” suggests that our educational system
may have become outmoded. Considering the easy
access to information ‘in the cloud’, perhaps our
goal as teachers (rather than conveying information)
is to pose questions for which our students
have to go find answers.
The dark side
The pursuit of Truth is not always entirely noble.
Far too often throughout history, scientific questioning
has resulted in the infliction of pain, injury
and other forms of abuse on humans and animals.
For example, grounded in the perverted sense of
Social Darwinism, that overlaid the entire European
colonial period of history (Haas, 2008) scientific
problems were often addressed with a remarkable
lack of respect for the fundamental rights of
humans. For example, the practical problem of
how long humans could survive in cold water was
important to the military staff of the Third Reich
in WW II. German pilots had their planes damaged
in the Battle of Britain, and had to bail out over the
North Sea. The risk-benefit of sending out rescue
teams, who might themselves be attacked by the
British, depended on how long the pilots could
survive in the cold water. That is a simple, practical
problem that depends on basic human physiology,
uniform design and nutritional status. But,
sacrificing inmates of the concentration camps
that the Nazi regime maintained, and who most
certainly did not volunteer to be immersed in cold
water until they died, represents a prime example
of how NOT to seek the Truth. Similarly, the Nazi
regime intentionally wounded concentration camp
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inmates so they could learn how to treat battlefield
infections in the pre-antibiotic era (e.g. a search for
Truth gone awry). In the post-WW II world, experiments
with athletic doping in the Russia dominated
East Germany and other East Block countries
was carried out with scientific precision and careful
analysis. However, beyond violating the concept of
‘fair play’, the process of using pubertal age children,
with no informed consent, without the ability
to refuse to participate, and with no possibility of
directly benefiting, is another example of the wrong
way to search for the Truth.
Lest we create the concept that such abuses
of the search for Truth are uniquely products of
Nazi or Communist political systems, one has only
to look at egregious examples of human subjects
abuses in the U.S. The Tuskegee study, in which
poor black share croppers were intentionally NOT
treated for syphilis (even after appropriate antibiotic
therapies were available), represents the single most
well-known American example of science looking
for Truth in the wrong way. Similar examples of
the testing of radiation effects on soldiers, of tests
of aerosol effects of infectious diseases, of intentionally
giving diseases to prisoners, the elderly or
the intellectually challenged are numerous enough
and well-documented enough to demonstrate that
the pursuit of Truth, even with a well-done experimental
design, can easily go in the wrong direction,
regardless of the political ideology.
In the fitness industry, the frequent claims of
extraordinary effects by new pieces of equipment
(the improvement is always ‘up to’ some magical
percentage) raise serious concerns about the motivation
of the search for Truth. Some of these product
claims are supposedly supported by scientific data,
although in many cases the ‘science’ is funded by
the company making the new device. Further, the
very concept of ‘evidence-based medicine’ is to
some degree based on studies funded by the pharmaceutical
industry. Although such trials are,
indeed, independently overseen by national agencies
like Food and Drug Administration, and have
complex oversight and reporting protocols in place,
it is inevitable that there is concern that the data are
‘driven’ by big pharma that is funding the studies.
Given the relative paucity of funding from noncommercial
sources for clinical trials, leading to
the reliance on pharma as the sponsor of drug trials
is a challenge to the otherwise very good idea of
evidence-based medicine.
Even in less commercial, academic settings
the career value of publishing has lured more than
a few investigators into publishing weak, poorly
controlled, or even overtly fraudulent data. The
trend of more and more ‘retractions’ of articles that
have survived the peer-review process and achieved
journal publication has increased alarmingly over
the last decade (http://retractionwatch.com). This
pattern suggests that the pressure to publish is so
large that the quest for Truth has been seriously
confounded by the need for promotion, tenure and
funding. Further, the inherently conservative nature
of the peer-review process means that journals are
handicapped by the tendency for reviewers (and
journal Editors) to be unreasonably bound by the
existing paradigm (dominant school of thought),
which means that fundamentally new ideas are
often hard to get published. Lastly, the reality for
most scientists is that most journals have considerable
page charges required for publication. Even
the very good ‘open access’ concept was quickly
corrupted by high submission fees, which created
the risk of a ‘pay to publish’ situation and the stark
reality of ‘predatory’ open access journals. These
predatory journals send advertisements to faculty
e-mails daily, encouraging submission of data that
will never be reviewed adequately, by an editorial
board that does not really exist, but will be published,
if the open access fee is paid! These developments
make it very hard for young investigators, or investigators
from small institutions with limited funding
(who often create the really groundbreaking scientific
concepts) to publish. As an example, consider
the year 1905. A young theoretical physicist, who
could not even get a normal university teaching
position, published three papers that revolutionized
the world of physics, setting out the concept
of the photoelectric effect (worthy of the Nobel
prize), special relativity and Brownian motion. Had
Albert Einstein been obliged to pay substantial page
charges or submission fees, these papers might have
remained on his desk. The history of science would
certainly have been different. Thus, while publication
following the peer-review process is the one of
the absolute pillars of the scientific process, and a
guardian of the pursuit of Truth, the economic realities
of the early 21st
century are forcing scientists
into a position where the pursuit of Truth depends
as much on funding as on their ability to ask and
answer important questions.
Conclusion
Science is a process that seeks the Truth. Using
a special set of rules, called the Scientific Method,
scientists search for the Truth. Thanks to the overlapping
character of scientific inquiry, from basic
to translational to applied science to clinical application,
the scientific process leads from a simple
answer to questions about how the world works to
the technological, sociological and organizational
developments that drive society. Science is tough
on itself. It is constantly self-correcting. Sometimes
this makes for confusion, consider for example how
recommendations about nutrition and exercise have
changed over the last century. But it has to be that
way if progress is to be made. Science is also very
tough on those with something to hide in the name
Foster, C. et al.: SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY AND ITS ROLE IN SPORTS SCIENCE Kinesiology 48(2016)2:274-284
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of retaining political, economic or even religious
power. History shows that in the wrong hands,
when performed without respect for human life and
withoutintegrity,sciencecandoharmthatoutweighs
the value of the Truth it reveals. False claims and
useless ideas have been sold or perpetuated by the
clever use of the term scientific, without following
the underlying rules of science. The contemporary
concerns about genetically engineered organisms,
nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, the
cloning of biological species (even humans) and
the potential marriage of humans and technology
into cybergenic organisms were anticipated by the
18th
century philosopher Giambattista Vico: “If it is
possible to do it, we shall do it”. This contemporary
‘experimentum humanum” at some level challenges
the very concept of mankind. Finally, the scientific
processes itself can be co-opted and contrived into
‘the business of science”, which looks like science
from the outside, but profits from deception and
elimination of the rigor that real science deserves
and demands. For all of us who started as curious
6-year-olds, and are still saying ‘segasaurous’ every
day in our hearts, that cannot stand.
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Submitted: June 20, 2016
Accepted: September 20, 2016
Correspondence to: 	
Prof. Carl Foster, Ph.D.
Department of Exercise and Sport Science
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
La Crosse, WI 54601, USA
Phone: 608 785 8687
Fax: 608 785 8172
E-mail: cfoster@uwlax.edu