> So you think the data is only relevant to the hypothesis you decided it's relevant for before you collect it No, the hypothesis is only valid before the data

> So you think the data is only relevant to the hypothesis you decided it's relevant for before you collect it No, the hypothesis is only valid before the data is collected. > Have you seen the fire sir?" "I have only seen smoke" "But have you seen the fire?" "It's irrelevant because I was only looking for smoke!". It's actually more like: "Have you seen fire at x?" "There's smoke at Y" All that means is that something is true about Y, not that x isn't on fire.