Just because someone asks a question about an object, organism, or event in nature does not necessarily mean that person is pursuing a scientific explanation. The appeal to authority as a valid explanation does not meet the requirements of science. Observations are based on sense experiences or on an extension of the senses through technology. Scientific explanations are made public. Scientists make presentations at scientific meetings or publish in professional journals, making knowledge public and available to other scientists.
Scientific explanations are tentative.
Explanations can and do change. There are no scientific truths in an absolute sense. Scientific explanations are historical. Past explanations are the basis for contemporary explanations, and those, in turn, are the basis for future explanations. Scientific explanations are probabilistic .