What Are the Five Steps in the Scientific Method?

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According to HowStuffWorks.com, the five steps in the scientific method are make an observation, ask a question, form a hypothesis, conduct an experiment and accept or reject the hypothesis. Various numbers of steps are sometimes used to explain the scientific method, but they all include the same ideas.

The scientific method is an organized, unbiased process for proving the validity of a theory. Having already made observations about a particular topic, the experimenter asks a question about it. He then forms a prediction of how the question is answered. Next he conducts a proper experiment to show whether the prediction is true or not. Finally, the experimenter accepts or rejects the original hypothesis based on the outcome of the experiment.