Otherwise known as the scientific method, or How Science Works. You were probably taught the basics of this in secondary school/high school/your local equivalent, but the number of physics undergraduates who came through my university not having the first clue about how science works is large enough that I suspect it’s not quite being hammered into people’s brains the way it should be. Which is a shame1, because not knowing anything about the scientific method is what allows so much anti-science to flourish in the press and media at large. I guarantee you homeopathy – for example — wouldn’t last a second in a world where people were the least bit curious about what was going on under the bonnet, and neither would the hundreds of news “stories” about how chocolate is actually good for us.
