BY MARY O'BRIEN
Right now, our democracy and planet depend on all of us working to understand scientific information.
It all starts with a scientist (or team of scientists) asking a question. The scientist guesses (hypothesizes) as to what the answer might be, and then employs methods to find out if she’s right or wrong about her guess. The universe, not the scientist, produces the answers.
The scientist might simply observe something that is happening. For instance, what has been measured as the average of July’s daily high temperatures in Moab for the last 100 years? Are our Julys getting hotter?