The awkwardness is that once you generalize enough to cover everything we normally refer to as "science", it's hard to include a very wide range of things we don't normally think of as science.
I think the term "scientific method" as normally used in English does not pick out any actual cluster of behaviors or practices. It's a term without a coherent referent.
I think the term "scientific method" as normally used in English does not pick out any actual cluster of behaviors or practices.
The term "scientific method" as ordinarily used is associated with the traditional rituals of "Science", which are themselves unsatisfactory, or at best an improvable-upon approximation to what really works in finding out about the world. The more useful cluster is the one hereabouts called Bayesian epistemology. It can and should be practiced everywhere, and if a fashion designer employs it, it is just as useful to call it that as when a scientist in the laboratory does.
I'm afraid I haven't properly designed the Muggles Studies course I introduced at my local Harry Potter fan club. Last Sunday we finally had our second class (after wasted months of insistence and delays), and I introduced some very basic descriptions of common biases, while of course emphasizing the need to detect them in ourselves before trying to detect them in other people. At some point, which I didn't completely notice, the discussion changed from an explanation of the attribution bias into a series of multicultural examples in favor of moral relativity. I honestly don't know how that happened, but as more and more attendants voiced their comments, I started to fear someone would irreversibly damage the lessons I was trying to teach. They basically stopped short of calling the scientific method a cultural construct, at which point I'm sure I would have snapped. I don't know what to make of this. Some part of me tries to encourage me and make me put more effort into showing these people the need for more reductionism in their worldview, but another part of me just wants to give them up as hopeless postmodernists. What should I do?