Experiment plays many essential roles in science. These include testing theories, providing evidence for the entities involved in our theories, and exploring an area in which no theory exists, and others. This book also discusses the ways in which an experiment can be good. They can be conceptually important, technically good, or pedagogically important. Most importantly they can be methodologically good. These are experiments in which good arguments are provided for the credibility of the experimental results. Franklin argues that a good experiment must be methodologically good. Without good reasons to believe an experimental result it can play no valid role in science. Franklin also suggests that a good experiment should contribute to scientific knowledge, although that is a desideratum not a requirement. He supports his views with detailed accounts of eighteen experiments. These include Gregor Mendel’s experiments on pea plants, the experiment by C.S. Wu and her collaborators that demonstrated that left-right symmetry was violated in nature, the discovery of the Higgs boson, and Robert Millikan’s measurement of the charge of the electron.
www.phys.colorado.edu/people/franklin-allan
