But a student who has generated an 'hypothesis' without a decade of wide and deep reading is... just testing their own biases (implicit, explicit, cognitive, social, whatever). It's epistemically less valuable and valid than more grounded hypotheses based in transparent and rigorous documentation. - ThreadSky

rkapitany.bsky.social • 6 days ago

But a student who has generated an 'hypothesis' without a decade of wide and deep reading is... just testing their own biases (implicit, explicit, cognitive, social, whatever). It's epistemically less valuable and valid than more grounded hypotheses based in transparent and rigorous documentation.

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rkapitany.bsky.social•6 days ago

That doesn't necessarily mean the observation itself is invalid, tho. It's probably just muddled.

I've had supervision students who are attracted to my research because they have personal religious convictions.

rkapitany.bsky.social•6 days ago

This lead to a project where the 'hypothesis' was: Compared to non-Muslims, adolescent Muslims have better grades in school (because their faith encourages frequent textual study). Observation. Sure. Obviously wrong though.

And wrong because the observation was biased.

rkapitany.bsky.social•6 days ago

Rather than building up from literature (say, "does frequency of reading generalize to understanding across domains", or something similar), they assumed that *Islamic practices* were core to the hypothesis, because it was core to their observation.

rkapitany.bsky.social•6 days ago

They proposed a causal relationship (Islamic Doctrine -> better students). If their observation had been, something like, "I've noticed Islamic students outperform their non-Islamic peers on standardized tests"... such an observation, especially without an implied causality, is open for exploration.

rkapitany.bsky.social•6 days ago

First, test if observation is valid (Is X > Y?). If valid (and robustly so), then proceed, to determining what might predict it.

Maybe there's something geniunely in the observation. But there are steps we ought to take (and teach) for an observation of the real-world to be considered ...

rkapitany.bsky.social•6 days ago

... epistemically valuable from an explanatory (or applied) point of view.

Anyway, here's a quick piece I found which seems to do a sensible job outlining the distinction.

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13571

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