Some Hindrances to Scientific

Inquiry (Research)
 Tradition

• Accepting customs, beliefs, practices, and superstitions are trues and are
pants of the daily lives of men.
• There are some cultures that believe ailments such as headaches are the result of
possession rather than of illness.
• Women who are conceiving should avoid eating dark or black foods because their
children will become dark also.
• Traditional practices of these cultures limit their ability to adapt to a more
modern world.
 Authority
• Accepting without question.
• Well known athlete is made to announce that to drink a certain brand liquor is good
because it makes the body strong.
• usage of snow caps can lighten your skin. (Alden Richards)

• They are believed without any scientific inquiry about the truth of their
pronouncements.
 Inaccurate Observation
• Describing wrongly what is actually observed.
• In the dead of moonlight night, a man sees a shadow in the form of a person and the
man concludes at once without any investigation that he has seen a ghost.
 Overgeneralization
• Establishing pattern out of a few instances.
• Two Ilocano husbands who were hardworking, responsible and trustworthy then he or
she concludes that Ilocano husbands are hardworking.
• One happens to travel in a rough road in a certain province he forms the impression
that the roads in province are rough.
 Selective Observation
• Persisting to believe an observed pattern from and overgeneralization and
ignoring pertinent patterns.
• One sees for the first time one or two prosperous Chinese stores beside a poor,
struggling Filipino store. He forms the conclusion that the Chinese are more shrewd
and more competitive than Filipinos.
• So every time that he sees Chinese and Filipino stores he always has the idea that
Chinese are better businessman than Filipinos.
 Made-up-information
• Making up information to explain away confusion.
• Suppose a buyer buys from a store, goods worth P50. 00 and gives the storekeeper a
P100.00 bill. The storekeeper mistakenly gives a change of P40.00.
• The buyer goes away without counting the change but when he gets home he finds that
the change is short of P10.00. He then concludes that the storekeeper is a cheater.
 Illogical Reasoning
• Attributing something to another without any logical basis
• For instance, extended good weather it may rain on weekend.
• It is sunny today so it will not rain.
• A woman is believed to be a sorcerer.
 Ego-involvement in Understanding
• Giving an explanation when one finds himself in an unfavorable situation.
• When a student gets a low grade, he says that he got low grade because his teacher has a
personal grudge against him and he is a victim of vindictiveness.
 Mystification
• Attributing to supernatural power, the phenomena that cannot be
understood.
• This is accepting that there are things which are beyond human intelligence to
understand and which are reserved only to supernatural being.
 To err is human
• An attribute admits the fallibility of man.
• When a man renders a wrong decision or commits a mistake, he merely leans on the
saying “To err is human”.
• Does not make any effort to determine the error
 Dogmatism
• The unwritten policy of certain institutions and governments prohibiting the
study of topics that are believed to run counter to the established doctrines
of such institutions and governments.

• Catholic School – Research about non-existence of god