More Related Content Similar to Mff715 s2 w1 scientific reasoning Similar to Mff715 s2 w1 scientific reasoning (20) More from Rachel Chung (20) 6. A systematic (scientific) process to find out things (purposefully); thereby increasing
knowledge in the business field.
Although business research could be pursued for the sake of knowledge (basic research), it
is done, quite often, for practical purposes (applied research).
Although modern business research tends to use both quantitative and qualitative analysis,
the quantitative approach (rooted in a positivist tradition) is still the dominant approach; in
particular, in applied research.
particular in applied research
Data collection and analysis are key to the scientific approach to business research
Another key is the research question is about business/organizational issues.
For example, Amy said that she’s interested in the effectiveness of weight‐loss programs.
She can ask several different research questions:
1. What is the nutritional value of Diet A vs. Diet B?
2. Does Diet A or Diet B produce higher customer satisfaction?
3. Does Diet A or Diet B lead to higher profit margin?
While 1 is a valid question, it really is more a hard science question (which is important for
people like nutrition scientists) as opposed to a business research question. 2 and 3, on
the other hand, are more relevant for business managers.
the other hand, are more relevant for business managers.
Can you think of potential fraud and forensics research questions that may be of interest to
you?
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8. Can you come up with your own examples of deductive reasoning?
Some potential answers are:
1. General Tso’s chicken is sweet. All sweet food has sugar in it. Therefore, General Tso’s
chicken must be made with sugar.
2. All cookies are baked with an oven. Fortune cookies are a kind of cookies. Therefore, to
make fortune cookies, we much bake with an oven.
make fortune cookies we much bake with an oven
In the Fraud and Forensic field, we have the following deductive reasoning:
3. All large corporations are likely to experience fraud. Worldcom is a large corporation.
Therefore, Worldcom is likely to experience fraud
4. All humans are prone to make biased decisions. Accountants are humans. Therefore,
accountants are likely to make biased decisions
When deductive reasoning is employed, it may be possible to develop theories that can be
tested empirically (e.g. observing a large sample of accountants to confirm that they
make biased decisions)
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11. Notes for online students:
• Whenever science performs an experiment and generalizes the result to the whole
population, it is using inductive approach. For example, it has been determined (by
examining ill people) that people suffering from Down syndrome have 47 chromosomes
(instead of 46). To say that ALL Down syndrome patients have 47 chromosomes is inductive
reasoning because not ALL Down syndrome patients in the world have been examined.
•Until the eighteenth century, Europeans thought that all swans were white. Black swans
were not discovered until Europeans settled in Australia and New Zealand. This is the
opening line of Nicolas Taleb’s popular book “Black Swan” that argues about the limitations
of our predictive methods (based on induction reasoning).
• On the other hand, we could not live without inductive reasoning. For example, when I
turn the steering wheel to the right, my car turns to the right; I am going to turn the
steering wheel to the right now; therefore, my car will turn in to the right. My reasoning is
based on my observation of the car doing so countless times in the past. As can be seen, it
would not be possible to drive if we were questioning what would happen every time we
turn the steering wheel! [The point of view that inductive logic was necessary and perhaps
more natural for people was made by David Hume who argued for a practical skepticism;
that is, rather than stating that inductive reasoning cannot provide true conclusions, we
that is, rather than stating that inductive reasoning cannot provide true conclusions, we
should use common sense (like in the case of arguing if the sun will rise tomorrow) in its
use. However, others such as Karl Popper have denied even the possibility of such as thing
as inductive reasoning. Now you may start to suspect why I said earlier that we can never
prove a hypothesis to be true, only that it is false. The answer is given by the problem of
inductive reasoning as illustrated by the black swan example. If this is not clear yet, do not
despair, we will get back to this problem in the next slide ] 11
12. • Popper argued that you can never prove anything to be right (even if you show that an
apple falls to the ground each time you try the experiment, you can never be certain that
this will always be true. Certainly, the apple will not fall if you are in the Space). However,
Popper said that you can prove if something is false (if the apple doesn’t fall to the floor
just once it means that the statement “apples left to themselves fall to the ground”). This
approach was proposed by Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1934 and is the
one currently accepted.
• Notice that when we say that a theory is falsifiable means that we can prove it to be
wrong. For example; in physics, the 17th century “phlogiston theory” that posited the
existence of a fire‐like substance, phlogiston, present in combustible material has been
proved false through multiple experiments. Why we cannot prove a theory to be true?
Because, if the result of an experiment shows that conclusion A is “true,” we could
replicate the experiment to confirm it but the question is how many experiments we
would need to perform to make sure our conclusion is true. The answer would be the
whole universe of possibilities because we need only one situation to prove the whole
theory wrong. If this doesn’t seem to make sense, think about an experiment, raising a
swan to see what color it turns out to be. You could have thousands of experiments that
would turn out white swans; however, if you move to New Zealand, the swans there could
also be black1
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