Seems to me that what Dr. Halwes is saying is that scientists use(what is generally called) the Scientific Method, plus a lot of other techniques -- therefore the term "Scientific Method" is not an inclusive description of what scientists do, therefore misleading, therefore we shouldn't use (or teach?) this term.

But I think "the Scientific Method" is a unique technique for discovering truth. If we think that's a misleading name we could call it the "Galilean Technique" or the "Newtonian Method" or some such. But as far as I can tell, the term "Scientific Method" is a perfectly good one, misleads few people, and I'd recommend continuing to use it (with an appropriate footnote on Halwes' caveats.)

N.B., I am an Instrumentalist and my comments should be taken in this light. Halwes writes "Part 1 of the Myth of Magical Science goes something like this: Scientific Knowledge is a new type of knowledge, superior to common sense and all other types of nonscientific beliefs. When I say that scientific knowledge is not special, I do not mean that it is not superior in content to much of what went before. I mean that it is not a superior kind of knowledge. While scientific knowledge may be superior in various ways, it is not fundamentally a different type of knowledge from ordinary knowledge.

I couldn't agree more! What could "a different type of knowledge" mean? As far as I'm concerned, there are two kinds of knowledge: True. False. (Really, one kind of knowledge with a fuzzy spectrum of truth-values (the degree to which a statement is an accurate description of reality, with "degree of accuracy" being understood as always defined by pragmatic test). What the Scientific Method is is a technique for reliably, thoroughly, and repeatably testing the pragmatic/Instrumental accuracy of the match between a statement and reality. --

"Personally, I have always had trouble with the word 'believe'. It has been used in pretty sloppy ways over the centuries. People 'believe' in flying saucers, the magical properties of certain numbers, ghosts and astrology. On the other hand, it is not the business of science to create new belief systems. We are trying to determine how the physical world actually works and this has nothing to do with whether you believe it to work one way or the other."