People often make bizarre claims about science. For example, last week Ben Waide, a Kentucky state legislator, said "The theory of evolution is a theory, and essentially the theory of
evolution is not science — Darwin made it up. My objection
is they should ensure whatever scientific material is being put forth
as a standard should at least stand up to scientific method. Under the
most rudimentary, basic scientific examination, the theory of evolution
has never stood up to scientific scrutiny."
It's amazingly clear that Mr. Waide doesn't have the foggiest clue what science is, and wouldn't pass a fourth grade test on the subject.
The Scientific Method, suggested by Isaac Newton, consists of five phases:
Question: Why is some particular thing about the universe the way that it is?
Hypothesis: you come up with a model for how that thing works.
Prediction: based on that model, you predict something that the model suggests would be true, but is not already obvious.
Experiment: you see if the prediction is true or not by trying it.
Analysis: you figure out if you've really proven your theory, and publish. The most crucial parts of this process are falsifiability and repeatability: does your experiment really prove what you set out to prove or did you crock it (possibly unwittingly) in a way that would succeed no mater what? The point is that the prediction be a little surprising--Maxwell's Equations predicting radio, General Relativity predicting the curvature of light in strong gravity, etc. Can other people with completely different situations duplicate your work? Very often, failed experiments lead to new, better questions. Most scientists spend most of their time in the experiment and analysis phase.
Evolution has stood up to some of the most intense scrutiny of any theory in history and has come through with flying colors. For example, countless experiments have shown that you can force a species to change by altering its environment to benefit some trait or other. Most of these are done in the lab, but we've also created numerous strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by using antibiotics too much. As another example, evolution predicts "link" species would appear in the fossil record. Most of these are transitional forms and don't last long enough to leave a trace, but plenty do, including in the fossil record of our own species. Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Zinganthropus, many others
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