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On the scope of scientific hypotheses

Hypotheses are frequently the starting point when undertaking the empirical portion of the scientific process. They state something that the scientific process will attempt to evaluate, corroborate, verify or falsify. Their purpose is to guide the types of data we collect, analyses we conduct, and i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Thompson, William Hedley, Skau, Simon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10465209/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37650069
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230607
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author Thompson, William Hedley
Skau, Simon
author_facet Thompson, William Hedley
Skau, Simon
author_sort Thompson, William Hedley
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description Hypotheses are frequently the starting point when undertaking the empirical portion of the scientific process. They state something that the scientific process will attempt to evaluate, corroborate, verify or falsify. Their purpose is to guide the types of data we collect, analyses we conduct, and inferences we would like to make. Over the last decade, metascience has advocated for hypotheses being in preregistrations or registered reports, but how to formulate these hypotheses has received less attention. Here, we argue that hypotheses can vary in specificity along at least three independent dimensions: the relationship, the variables, and the pipeline. Together, these dimensions form the scope of the hypothesis. We demonstrate how narrowing the scope of a hypothesis in any of these three ways reduces the hypothesis space and that this reduction is a type of novelty. Finally, we discuss how this formulation of hypotheses can guide researchers to formulate the appropriate scope for their hypotheses and should aim for neither too broad nor too narrow a scope. This framework can guide hypothesis-makers when formulating their hypotheses by helping clarify what is being tested, chaining results to previous known findings, and demarcating what is explicitly tested in the hypothesis.
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spelling pubmed-104652092023-08-30 On the scope of scientific hypotheses Thompson, William Hedley Skau, Simon R Soc Open Sci Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Hypotheses are frequently the starting point when undertaking the empirical portion of the scientific process. They state something that the scientific process will attempt to evaluate, corroborate, verify or falsify. Their purpose is to guide the types of data we collect, analyses we conduct, and inferences we would like to make. Over the last decade, metascience has advocated for hypotheses being in preregistrations or registered reports, but how to formulate these hypotheses has received less attention. Here, we argue that hypotheses can vary in specificity along at least three independent dimensions: the relationship, the variables, and the pipeline. Together, these dimensions form the scope of the hypothesis. We demonstrate how narrowing the scope of a hypothesis in any of these three ways reduces the hypothesis space and that this reduction is a type of novelty. Finally, we discuss how this formulation of hypotheses can guide researchers to formulate the appropriate scope for their hypotheses and should aim for neither too broad nor too narrow a scope. This framework can guide hypothesis-makers when formulating their hypotheses by helping clarify what is being tested, chaining results to previous known findings, and demarcating what is explicitly tested in the hypothesis. The Royal Society 2023-08-30 /pmc/articles/PMC10465209/ /pubmed/37650069 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230607 Text en © 2023 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Thompson, William Hedley
Skau, Simon
On the scope of scientific hypotheses
title On the scope of scientific hypotheses
title_full On the scope of scientific hypotheses
title_fullStr On the scope of scientific hypotheses
title_full_unstemmed On the scope of scientific hypotheses
title_short On the scope of scientific hypotheses
title_sort on the scope of scientific hypotheses
topic Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10465209/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37650069
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230607
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