ABSTRACT
Scientists would love to play around with all of them, and indeed many different combinations of new ideas and novel techniques will yield ‘interesting data’. But there are two problems: scientists will not have enough time and interesting data are plentiful but they won’t in themselves advance science. A hypothesis is a concise statement that is capable of falsification. It was the philosopher Karl Popper who insisted that the hypothesis was central to science. Scientists who offer a hypothesis are doing a favour not only for themselves but also for everyone else involved in their project, from the initial reviewer of their grant proposal to those reviewing their performance and finally for those trying to understand their publications. Regarding scientists’ career, learning how to propose a hypothesis will provide scientists with a magnificent key in their pocket that will enable them to transfer to any scientific discipline.
