The Goals of Science

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the goals of science – the things that researchers are interested in achieving with their science, focusing in particular on: (i) examples of right and left brained people, pre-schooler stimulation, and learning styles as concepts which are based somewhat on fallacy; (ii) the specific goals of science being to make new knowledge, explain why the observed events happen in the way they do, then predict what will happen next; (iii) two powerful tools researchers have in their arsenal – measurement and theories, and how they interact.

About the lecturer

Dr Helena Paterson is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Glasgow, responsible for teaching both research methods and social psychology. Dr Paterson’s research interests lie in the development of dynamic social events. One focus of this is understanding how human qualities are represented by the human cognitive system and, by extension, how we develop representations of social events and the accompanying stereotypes/biases. Dr Paterson is an advocate of open science, incorporating its principles into her research and teaching. Some of Dr Paterson’s recent publications include ‘Open-source tutorials benefit the field’ (2022) and ‘Data visualization using R for researchers who do not use R’ (2022).