The diagram you showed does not depict the scientific method. It shows the "science creation process" in a quaint, elementary school manner. See below.
You are conflating the scientific method with the general science creation process.
The creation of science involves someone having an epiphany that realizes some CAUSE->EFFECT in how nature works. There are no rules for how one is allowed to have such an epiphany, but when teaching children, we tend to dumb it down into easily understandable chunks, like ...
1. Start with making your observations
2. Take measurements and gather your data
3. Analyze your data
4. Ask a question, or two
5. Assess your personal carbon footprint and ask whether this endeavor is worth destroying the global climate
6. Develop an hypothesis
7. Develop a test for that hypothesis
8. Analyze your results
9. Adjust your hypothesis as needed -> return to step 7 if needed
10. Demand that conservatives be imprisoned for the climate variability impact their Trump-driven capitalistic human activity is doing to the Dominican coral reefs
11. Share a fruit cup with a socially-distanced friend.
The bottom line is that whenever you are discussing the above, you are trying to explain to children what many scientists often do, but none of the above is prescriptive. All that matters is that the resulting model be falsifiable and predict nature.
ENTER THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Now, here is the key disctinction. Once a science model has been developed (i.e. a falsifiable model that predicts nature) and not a moment before, the scientific method is applied. The scientific method does not create science, it tries to falsify it, i.e. show that it is false. In other words, the scientific method takes a falsifiable model and tries to show it to be false. This is why you cannot apply the scientific method to, say Christianity, for example. Christianity is a religion and is therefore not falsifiable. The scientific method cannot do anything to show it to be false.
More formally, the scientific method is a systematic battery of tests that tries break a model. As I alluded to above, the scientific method requires a falsfiable model as input which is first reviewed for internal consistency of logic (e.g. your argument that you do not support contract killings would fail the internal consistency check) and if a model fails that test, it is already false and it cannot proceed; the model must be corrected or discarded.
Assuming a model passes the internal consistency check of the scientific method, the model's external consistency check is performed, i.e. the model is checked against the rest of science to see if there are any contradictions. If there are then something has to be fixed, but not necessarily the model being examined at the moment.
Then the big moment arrives in which the model itself is tested for its veracity. The model will be expressed unambiguously in some formal notation. The model itself, expressed unambiguously, becomes its own hypothesis to be tested, and that hypothesis has a name, i.e. "the null hypothesis", called that because it is not derived from any other hypothesis. An experiment is devised to test the null hypothesis and the results are published. If the scientific method doesn't show the null hypothesis to be false, then the model gets to remain as science for the time being.
So, in review, the "science creation process" doesn't really exist because there aren't any rules dictating how science is allowed to come into the world; we simply teach children a story to prepare them to some extent. The scientific method, however, is applied after a science model is created, systematically attempting to break that model.
If you are saying that a study can inform an application of the scientific method, then yes it can. Then again, everything written on JPP could potentially inform an application of the scientific method ... but ThatOwlCoward's posts ... not so much.
Nope. Either you have science or you don't. There is no category for "counts for something".
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