My guess is that this post is a joke to 50% of scientists and serious to the other 50%. - ThreadSky

mikefeigin.bsky.social • 84 days ago

My guess is that this post is a joke to 50% of scientists and serious to the other 50%.

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20:80 based on my reading of the literature - the reverse scientific method of trying to prove your hypothesis - is very common...

fearoncassidy.bsky.social•84 days ago

Or 50% serious and 50% a joke to most scientists 😅

limbic.bsky.social•82 days ago

Yes!👍

methuselah1947.bsky.social•84 days ago

In some cases 90%. "Amyloid Hypothesis" is still predominant and we are derailed by it.

dabiophysicist.bsky.social•83 days ago

And 100% of them are right

mikefeigin.bsky.social•84 days ago

My friends who are reviewing F31’s tell me that hypotheses are dead.

dabiophysicist.bsky.social•83 days ago

The fishing expedition is one side of it; another is "we asked if we could design..." style retrohypotheses

jeffreymphd.bsky.social•84 days ago

It's a really interesting question. There's a beautiful passage in one of the Douglas Adams books about how a scientist needs to see things first. Generating big data sets is a great way to do that. OTOH, there's lots of older crap ecology based on spurious correlations.

membranebiology.bsky.social•84 days ago

I use this quote when teaching my undergrads. A hypothesis has to be grounded in reality and relevant to the system you’re studying. How can you come up with a testable hypothesis without observing your system first?

mikefeigin.bsky.social•84 days ago

Sure. But “observing your system” doesn’t mean “spend $100k on single cell sequencing.” It can also be “read some papers and think.”

membranebiology.bsky.social•84 days ago

For sure! That’s totally out of my reach anyway

atkinscolm.bsky.social•84 days ago

Hypotheses are dead, long live Hypothese.

azbiomarkers.bsky.social•83 days ago

Yeah, with enough data you can find a correlation for sure...causation might be harder! https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002240

metamorpheus.bsky.social•83 days ago

The research scientists believe it but the grant referees don't. LOL.

dralgaegirl.bsky.social•84 days ago

Very true!

kalwat.bsky.social•84 days ago

Porque no los dos?

jukebarosh.bsky.social•84 days ago

I'll chime in when I finish reading the Alzheimer's tome in 2032

pallaslab.bsky.social•83 days ago

But silly kid, it's not a hypothesis! Much of my teaching time is spent teaching students the difference between hypotheses and predictions. You'd think by senior year, and especially by mid-PhD, they would know the difference. 😣

smlea.bsky.social•83 days ago

As a structural biologist the only sensible hypothesis is - if I see what it looks like I’ll understand it better…

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