Many people pat themselves on the back for their use of the scientific method without understanding that they're using it incorrectly. When I was taught scientific research, they taught us about the Null Hypothesis. The Null Hypothesis is basically the opposite of what you think happens, and it is against the Null that you design your experiments with an eye to disprove the null. Like I tell my students, science never proves anything. It removes all other possibilities until only the truth remains. Science is deductive rather than inductive, but all too often in order to seem relevant, to publish, and to push an agenda, scientists jump to conclusions and assume causality. So, we end up making poor judgments based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Do you really have enough to reject the null? If not, then it's still possible.
Often we fear things because they might happen rather than because they are likely. I remind myself with the pennies and the ringtone that I don't really have any reason to discount certain null hypotheses. So, I can't assume that things will happen or did. I can only consider that they are possible. Just because a thing can or should happen doesn't follow that it will or that it must. If the only reason you have to fear a thing is that it might happen, well, you're jumping to conclusions without any data to refute the Null Hypothesis.
When you design an experiment, you can't really design one that proves something happens. Chaos theory teaches us that sometimes things happen of which we are not aware and that we cannot see that precipitate change at places distal in space and time to their origin. When we assume that what we did caused something, we ignore that there are other things and forces at work, other people who make choices, and sometimes things that we couldn't control that created change. I love the scene from IQ where Einstein's friends chat about atoms. "Did you feel that? Somewhere an atom collided with another atom and so on until one collided with us. Atoms, those sexy little cuties!" You have to design tests and investigations in order to disprove the Null Hypothesis, to prove that you can reject that things are not related. That still doesn't tell you how they are.
It takes time to be a good scientist, time and patience and practice. It takes skill to ask the right questions, design the right tests, and then to interpret the data without preconceived bias about what you think ought to be. Then there's Obama who goes up to Alaska and concludes that climate change is real because ice is melting in summer. Wow, give that man a PhD! By a long and arduous process of elimination, we eliminate all other things until what we think must be true because nothing else is. I am sitting here wracking my brain about a huge disappointment and blaming myself, and then I remind myself that I don't have any data to prove that what I fear or think might be true actually is. I cannot reject the Null, and so it's possible that nothing I did could change it, that nothing I did caused it to be this way, and that it will turn out as is best given the right time.
So many things are possible, and usually the best things eventually win the day. We get impatient, for a patent, for a relationship, for a particular outcome, and we try to force things. I've been thinking a lot about Steinbeck's letter to his 15 year old son lately: "The best thing is not to rush it. If it's right it happens. Nothing good gets away." It's not much comfort now because I continue to get older and wake up every day without any evidence of progress. Eight years after moving to Vegas and almost five years in this house, and I'm still no closer to my goal. When I talk to people who have the semblance of what I seek but not the substance, they tell me I'm not really missing anything; God wisely spared me several times from the shackles of loveless marriage, and I thank Him for that.
I often hypothesize that I'm to blame, making the Null Hypothesis that I'm not to blame. I cannot in any of my thinking or investigation or experimentation come up with enough evidence to reject the null that I'm not to blame. Things are not conclusive or easy, and sometimes there are so many variables or outliers that it's impossible for me at least to properly and scientifically tackle the issue. It's possible that I have not done anything wrong. It's possible that a butterfly flapped its wings in China in 2002 and forced the issue. I think things happen for a reason, and it's possible that they will still turn out as I hope. What should be will be when the time is right. When it involves a tree dying or fruit ripening or getting a last minute section to teach, it's easy because I'm not emotionally involved. Affairs of the heart and issues of career are different because we feel our lives depend on positive outcomes. However, I know I've been delivered from Egypt before, which means God can and will do it again. The penny I found on the ground today tells me to trust God, that everything has been done according to the wisdom of Him who knoweth all things. I just wish He'd get moving.
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