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I've always wondered why people call it a “failed experiment” if it disproves the hypothesis. Disproving the hypothesis is just as much an experiment's job as

I've always wondered why people call it a “failed experiment” if it disproves the hypothesis. Disproving the hypothesis is just as much an experiment's job as proving it. Doing neither would be actual failure.

sova 9y ago
Experimentation is really the heart of scientific progress. Yes, experiments will yield results that do not confirm the hypothesis, that will happen very frequently, and that is good because we can chuck unnecessary results away, focusing on what fits the picture accurately, what doesn't, and what pictures we can make. I don't think it's really possible to have failure though, since you would just end up with inconclusive results and do more science.
xapata 9y ago
A "failed" experiment does not "disprove" a hypothesis, it only provides evidence which is not consistent with the hypothesis.
- contravariant 9y ago
  Actually not even that, it provides evidence which is consistent with the null hypothesis.
rflrob 9y ago
Experiments disproving the hypothesis are usually deeply unsettling, because in most cases, we have a pretty good reason for having that hypothesis to begin with---often lots of other experiments from the giants in your field. Those really smart guys (and, unfortunately it is mostly guys and not gals) are more impressive than you, J Random Gradstudent, so maybe you just screwed up the experiment. And even if the ruling hypothesis is wrong, then that means you're going to have to come up with a better one that fits both the old experiments and your new one, which is probably going to be hard to do if you want your new hypothesis to be simple and clear. So a really clear rejection of the alternative hypothesis is great (which the article advocates for), but most of the time it's the more ambiguous non-rejection of the null (as you put it, actual failure), with a slim chance of bashing the old guard with your probably janky new hypothesis that explains it. They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown... and you don't want to be a Bozo.
- sverhagen 9y ago
  I'm an ESL speaker, but after some searching on the Internet, I've convinced myself that "guys" is generally accepted as a mixed gender group.
  - skywhopper 9y ago
    As an American speaker who grew up in the south and lives in the Midwest, that's not true in every case. When addressing a mixed group, "hey guys" can usually work. When talking about a group of unspecific people, it can work, but mostly because our cultural default is to assume male. When talking about a group of specific individuals "the guys in the office are smart" I would take that to be more specifically male. It's definitely not unambiguously mixed gender. In the case of the GP, the word was used to make a point about the ambiguity of the word, in a way that's very naturally idiomatic for a native English speaker, imo.
    - lobotryas 9y ago
      As another native speaker I can say that "guys" refers to a mixed gender group perfectly well. Saying that it implies a predominantly male group is more indicative of your personal life experiences or bias. Regarding GP, my only guess is that they were virtue signaling because they explicitly went out of their way to make that point. If they really wanted to avoid gendered nouns they could have written "folks", "people", or any number of similar words (kind of like how I'm doing here, by not assuming GP's gender).
      - falsedan 9y ago
        'Folk' is fine, though try to work out how to drop 'comrade' into your vocab. In this particular case, the OP could have used 'researchers' and: 1. avoided putting off/distracting people by the use of gendered language; 2. been more precise.
      - GavinMcG 9y ago
        Also a native speaker, here. Seems to me that "guys" can refer to a group of men, or to a mixed-gender group, but not to a group of women. So while it's absolutely the case that it can refer to a mixed-gender group, using it that way is still problematic in that it emphasizes men's membership.
closed 9y ago
Can you give an example? I have never seen people say it was a failed experiment when it "disproved" a hypothesis. If it was able to disprove something, often that means people perceive a high degree of certainty in the results. They might be bummed out and try to suppress its publication because they don't consider it disproof of a favorite theory, though (for whatever reason, good or bad). Edit: I just remembered that one time I saw people complain that their analyses had "too much power", which might fit in with the parent comment's point?
sweetdreamerit 9y ago
The matter is that the hypothesis is not disproved. From a statistical point of view, H_0 not rejected just means that we can not exclude that the difference (or the correlation) between two or more variables would be attributed to the chance (that is, the sample variance). The outcome is, of course, informative. If we organize many well designed experiments, and none of them is able to confirm the hypothesis, we can reasonably conclude that it can't be proved. The null hypothesis, however, is not as strong (in disproving a theory) as the alternative hypothesis is in proving it.
tingletech 9y ago
they failed to disprove the null hypothesis, but that does not disprove the alternative hypothesis
deleted 9y ago
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sova 9y ago

Experimentation is really the heart of scientific progress. Yes, experiments will yield results that do not confirm the hypothesis, that will happen very frequently, and that is good because we can chuck unnecessary results away, focusing on what fits the picture accurately, what doesn't, and what pictures we can make. I don't think it's really possible to have failure though, since you would just end up with inconclusive results and do more science.

xapata 9y ago

A "failed" experiment does not "disprove" a hypothesis, it only provides evidence which is not consistent with the hypothesis.

contravariant 9y ago
Actually not even that, it provides evidence which is consistent with the null hypothesis.

rflrob 9y ago

Experiments disproving the hypothesis are usually deeply unsettling, because in most cases, we have a pretty good reason for having that hypothesis to begin with---often lots of other experiments from the giants in your field. Those really smart guys (and, unfortunately it is mostly guys and not gals) are more impressive than you, J Random Gradstudent, so maybe you just screwed up the experiment. And even if the ruling hypothesis is wrong, then that means you're going to have to come up with a better one that fits both the old experiments and your new one, which is probably going to be hard to do if you want your new hypothesis to be simple and clear. So a really clear rejection of the alternative hypothesis is great (which the article advocates for), but most of the time it's the more ambiguous non-rejection of the null (as you put it, actual failure), with a slim chance of bashing the old guard with your probably janky new hypothesis that explains it. They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown... and you don't want to be a Bozo.

sverhagen 9y ago
I'm an ESL speaker, but after some searching on the Internet, I've convinced myself that "guys" is generally accepted as a mixed gender group.
- skywhopper 9y ago
  As an American speaker who grew up in the south and lives in the Midwest, that's not true in every case. When addressing a mixed group, "hey guys" can usually work. When talking about a group of unspecific people, it can work, but mostly because our cultural default is to assume male. When talking about a group of specific individuals "the guys in the office are smart" I would take that to be more specifically male. It's definitely not unambiguously mixed gender. In the case of the GP, the word was used to make a point about the ambiguity of the word, in a way that's very naturally idiomatic for a native English speaker, imo.
  - lobotryas 9y ago
    As another native speaker I can say that "guys" refers to a mixed gender group perfectly well. Saying that it implies a predominantly male group is more indicative of your personal life experiences or bias. Regarding GP, my only guess is that they were virtue signaling because they explicitly went out of their way to make that point. If they really wanted to avoid gendered nouns they could have written "folks", "people", or any number of similar words (kind of like how I'm doing here, by not assuming GP's gender).
    - falsedan 9y ago
      'Folk' is fine, though try to work out how to drop 'comrade' into your vocab. In this particular case, the OP could have used 'researchers' and: 1. avoided putting off/distracting people by the use of gendered language; 2. been more precise.
    - GavinMcG 9y ago
      Also a native speaker, here. Seems to me that "guys" can refer to a group of men, or to a mixed-gender group, but not to a group of women. So while it's absolutely the case that it can refer to a mixed-gender group, using it that way is still problematic in that it emphasizes men's membership.

closed 9y ago

Can you give an example? I have never seen people say it was a failed experiment when it "disproved" a hypothesis. If it was able to disprove something, often that means people perceive a high degree of certainty in the results. They might be bummed out and try to suppress its publication because they don't consider it disproof of a favorite theory, though (for whatever reason, good or bad). Edit: I just remembered that one time I saw people complain that their analyses had "too much power", which might fit in with the parent comment's point?

sweetdreamerit 9y ago

The matter is that the hypothesis is not disproved. From a statistical point of view, H_0 not rejected just means that we can not exclude that the difference (or the correlation) between two or more variables would be attributed to the chance (that is, the sample variance). The outcome is, of course, informative. If we organize many well designed experiments, and none of them is able to confirm the hypothesis, we can reasonably conclude that it can't be proved. The null hypothesis, however, is not as strong (in disproving a theory) as the alternative hypothesis is in proving it.

tingletech 9y ago

they failed to disprove the null hypothesis, but that does not disprove the alternative hypothesis

deleted 9y ago

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