Skip to main content

Building and Testing a Good Hypothesis

credit: Chronicle
A hypothesis is a tentative claim about the relationship between two or more variables. Basically, it's what you're expecting to happen in a study. If/then statements are the most common form of hypothesis writing. What may happen because of the possible outcome of this statement is explained in this statement (then). You could also use the word "may" in the sentence. However, a hypothesis cannot always be proven to be true based on analysis of the results. That is why a test or an experiment is performed in order to prove the validity of the hypothesis.

Hypothesis vs Theory

Scientists construct hypotheses before conducting any relevant research, aside from a basic background review. You ask a question, do some research, and then form a hypothesis. Then, you test your hypothesis. 

On the contrary, a theory is an attempt to explain something that has already been supported by data. Because of the experimentation and the data the theory is based on, it is thought to be more likely to be true than a hypothesis. In science however, both hypothesis and theory is used side by side.

Scientific Method on Hypothesis

Hypothesis can be considered as the foundation to scientific method because hypothesis is built based on guess despite the fact that the guess can be correct or not. To test a hypothesis we can follow the scientific method according to the following steps.

  • Making questions
  • Background research
  • Building up a hypothesis
  • Perform the experiment
  • Gather data
  • Result analysis
  • Conclusions
Now let's try to build up a hypothesis on one of the most famous beliefs in the early centuries and test it according to the scientific method. The belief is non other than the Spontaneous Generation. In the middle ages, Greeks and romans believed that complex living organisms can come to life out of nothing but non-living things. They used to believe that maggots are born out of rotten meat, mice are born from decaying pieces of cloth and so on. Now, let us try to build a hypothesis around that and test it in order to prove it wrong.

The first thing that we have to do is make questions. Can living things really come to existence purely out of non-living matters? If so, how? What are the creatures that undergo spontaneous generation?

Now, let's do a little background research. As the Nile River flooded Egypt every spring, nutrient-rich soil was left behind that allowed people to grow food for that year. However, along with the muddy soil, a large number of frogs appeared that were not present during the dry season. In conclusion based on this, frogs were born out of muddy soil, which was clear to everyone at the time.

Let us now move on to build a hypothesis. Let's take a piece of rotten meat for instance. 

(P1) If a piece of meat is left to be rotting, then maggots can be born inside it.

(P1) A piece of meat is left to be rotting.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

(C) Therefore, maggots can be born inside it.


We all can see that the above argument is invalid. However, let's move on to the next step, which is testing the hypothesis. Let's take two jars containing two equally similar pieces of meat, with one inside of them each. Close one jar not letting air inside it and keep the other one open. Let us gather some data. In a few hours, you will be able to see flies inside the open jar and feed on the rotten meat and you will also be able to see flies around the closed jar as well. In a matter of a few days, you will able to see tiny maggots come out of the open jar and nothing happening inside the closed jar. 

Let's move on to analyze the results. Flies were able to feed on one of the pieces of meat because one was left in an open jar and the flies were unable to even go near the other piece of meat because it was inside a perfectly sealed jar. Therefore, flies were able to feed on the meat inside the open jar and lay eggs on it. And eventually, eggs hatched and maggots came out. But inside the sealed jar, what you were able to see was just a rotten piece of meat.

Finally, let's come to a conclusion. One jar was sealed and the other one was open. The piece of meat in the open jar was full of maggots because flies could feed on it and lay eggs on it as well. On the other hand, flies could not feed on the piece of meat inside the sealed jar and they were unable to lay eggs on it. Therefore, meat cannot give birth to maggots. Therefore as a whole, we can prove that the above hypothesis is wrong and the Spontaneous Generation is also wrong.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sense of Understanding Through Scientific Explanation

 What is Scientific Explanation? Image Credit:  Particle Our explanations of how the world definitely worked thousands of years ago mostly were not very accurate, which is fairly significant. A god’s praise or vengeance essentially was blamed for things we couldn’t understand in a big way. Or, we literally were led to actually believe that the world mostly was random, sort of contrary to popular belief. We now generally have a much sort of better understanding of why things definitely are the way they basically are thanks to science, or so they essentially thought. The study of the natural world through observation and experimentation sort of is remarkably known as science. A distinctly scientific explanation uses observations and measurements to for all intents and purposes explain something exceptionally observed in nature. Scientific explanations should be predominantly logical and singularly match the evidence, or at in most cases least as usually much of the evidence as p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Race and Ethnicity

credit:  apa.org Let us begin with race, which refers to a group of people who share inherited physical characteristics such as skin color, facial features, and stature. One critical question about race is whether it is a biological or a social category. Most people think of race in biological terms, and race has indeed served as the “premier source of human identity” for more than 300 years, or since white Europeans began colonizing populations of color elsewhere in the world. It is undeniable that people all over the world differ physically in some obvious ways. The most obvious difference is skin tone: some people have very dark skin, while others have very light skin. Other distinctions exist as well. Some people have extremely curly hair, whereas others have extremely straight hair. Some people have thin lips and others have thick lips. Some groups of people are relatively tall, whereas others are relatively short. Using physical differences as criteria, scie...
Post a Comment
Read more

PERCEPTION AND PERCEPTUAL LEARNING

PERCEPTION Perception is the cognitive process of converting sensations into useful information. It is the process of mentally evaluating something we see or hear in order to later judge and render a judgement on a situation, person, or a group. Perception can be categorized into five types; Visuals Sounds Smell Taste Touch Perception is a compelling interest and an area of thorough investigation. Imagine you are gazing at the outside through a window on a rainy day. Your perception, the way you see represents the outside as it is. The concept of rain is the way you perceive through your eyes, which is visual sense. Just like you see the white colored coffee mug on your table as white and the coffee in it as coffee itself, and you hear birds chirping through your ears is also a perception. There are three types of perception; Veridical perception Illusion Hallucination For example, let's take three average persons looking at a zebra in a zoo. First person sees the zebra as it is, w...
Post a Comment
Read more