Thus, while human-factors engineering aims at substituting scientific method for guesswork, its specific techniques are usually empirical rather than theoretical.
It turns out that this longstanding bit of medical wisdom was based on virtually no scientific evidence, just guesswork, and unless you have already developed inflamed or infected diverticula, your diet need not be so restricted, most experts say.
Before computers ushered in the technique known to meteorologists as numerical weather prediction, forecasting had more in common with artful guesswork than scientific mapping.
After more than a month of speculation, scientific calculation and plain guesswork – not to mention thousands of visits to bookies – it has finally been confirmed that 2013's most eagerly anticipated arrival is due in July.
The estimates were part scientific detective work and part guesswork.
While neuromarketing is scientific and helps marketers replace a lot of guesswork, it doesn't tell marketers on the front-end of developing a new strategy or campaign what feeling or emotion needs to be evoked – what's the impetus (back to the BMW making me feel cool and look successful) to get consumers to buy.
Where are we heading?" the museum asks, before setting out to provide some scientific answers to the first two questions, and a little random guesswork to the last.
As a researcher and consultant, he applied rigorous scientific methods to a field bound more often by haphazard custom, guesswork and superstition.
Establishment pollsters are concerned above all with trying to eliminate guesswork from their research, with trying to make it as scientific as possible, so they stick to weightings that they can know with near-certainty are justifiable.
"It is easier to speak quickly from guesswork than it is to wait and speak definitively on the record, based on scientific conclusions," this official said.
