This one's for you, Otis.  I know your grasp of science is tenuous at
best.  Similar to your grasp on reality.  Were it not for your wanton
disregard for hurting other people, your ignorance of science (while
claiming a past in engineering) would be comical.
--
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Elements_of_scientific_method
--
The scientific method involves the following basic facets:

   * Observation. A constant feature of scientific inquiry.

   * Description. Information must be reliable, i.e., replicable
(repeatable) as well as valid (relevant to the inquiry).

   * Prediction. Information must be valid for observations past,
present, and future of given phenomena, i.e., purported "one shot"
phenomena do not give rise to the capability to predict, nor to the
ability to repeat an experiment.

   * Control. Actively and fairly sampling the range of possible
occurrences, whenever possible and proper, as opposed to the passive
acceptance of opportunistic data, is the best way to control or
counterbalance the risk of empirical bias.

   * Falsifiability, or the elimination of plausible alternatives.
This is a gradual process that requires repeated experiments by
multiple researchers who must be able to replicate results in order to
corroborate them. This requirement, one of the most frequently
contended, leads to the following: All hypotheses and theories are in
principle subject to disproof. Thus, there is a point at which there
might be a consensus about a particular hypothesis or theory, yet it
must in principle remain tentative. As a body of knowledge grows and a
particular hypothesis or theory repeatedly brings predictable results,
confidence in the hypothesis or theory increases.

   * Causal explanation. Many scientists and theorists on scientific
method argue that concepts of causality are not obligatory to science,
but are in fact well-defined only under particular, admittedly
widespread conditions. Under these conditions the following
requirements are generally regarded as important to scientific
understanding:

       * Identification of causes. Identification of the causes of a
particular phenomenon to the best achievable extent.
       * Covariation of events. The hypothesized causes must correlate
with observed effects.
       * Time-order relationship. The hypothesized causes must precede
the observed effects in time.

The following is a more specific and technical description of the
hypothesis/testing method, discussion of which follows below. This
general set of elements and organization of procedures will in general
tend to be more characteristic of natural sciences and experimental
psychology than of disciplines such as sociology and a number of other
fields commonly categorized as social sciences. Among the latter,
methods of verification and testing of hypotheses may involve less
stringent mathematical and statistical interpretations of these
elements within the respective disciplines. Nonetheless the cycle of
hypothesis, verification and formulation of new hypotheses will tend to
resemble the basic cycle described below.

The essential elements of a scientific method are iterations,
recursions, interleavings, and orderings of the following:

   * Characterizations (Quantifications, observations, and
measurements)
   * Hypotheses (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of
observations and measurements)
   * Predictions (reasoning including logical deduction from
hypothesis and theory)
   * Experiments (tests of all of the above)