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In theory, but it is extremely easy to get into the mindset that your hypothesis is absolutely true, and as such your goal is to prove that hypothesis. I’ve ne

In theory, but it is extremely easy to get into the mindset that your hypothesis is absolutely true, and as such your goal is to prove that hypothesis. I’ve never fabricated numbers for anything I’ve done, but there certainly have been times where I thought about it, usually after the fourth or fifth broken multi-hour test, especially if the test breakage doesn’t directly contradict the hypothesis.

DiggyJohnson 2y ago
Thanks for staying your point so clearly. I’m a bystander to this discussion, but agree with you about the reality of this.
thayne 2y ago
Maybe it's different in other fields, but from my background in physics it seems like if your hypothesis is wrong that is usually way more interesting than it being right. As long as it isn't just because of some contamination in the data. Although, contrary to what I was taught in elementary school, most of the experiments in the physics department of my university didn't even really have a hypothesis. They were usually either of the form "we are going to do this thing, and see what happens", or "we're going to measure this thing more accurately than anyone before".
- tombert 2y ago
  So I'm not a "scientist" really, I'm just a bit more of a theory-focused software engineer. An example has been times where I really want to use a certain concurrency style, and I'm convinced that it should be faster than the way we're doing things before, so I will write a few non-trivial tests to make sure that's right, and I'll get inconclusive numbers.
  - thayne 2y ago
    That's still an interesting result. If you thought it would have a significant impact, and it doesn't, that means something is wrong with your mental model that lead you to think it would be faster. And if you can figure out why, that can help you find a solution that is faster. Of course, that is still very frustrating if you are on a tight deadline and all you have is one thing you know doesn't work.
    - tombert 2y ago
      No doubt that it's interesting, but when there's deadlines that I need to meet "Throughput level X", and it's also infuriating when the theory isn't lining up with reality.
SkyBelow 2y ago
Not just the mindset. Our social setting can deem some hypothesis must be true and any disagreement is blasphemy of the highest order. The 'softer' a science, the more beliefs like this that exist. Sometimes you can even see scientists deeply studying something adjacent to one of these beliefs start to question it and how delicately they have to dance around the issue until enough other scientists also question that they have the safety in numbers to begin directly questioning the belief. A reoccurring example of this is the research around the labeling of certain behaviors as abnormal psychology which eventually lead to an update in the DSM.

DiggyJohnson 2y ago

Thanks for staying your point so clearly. I’m a bystander to this discussion, but agree with you about the reality of this.

thayne 2y ago

Maybe it's different in other fields, but from my background in physics it seems like if your hypothesis is wrong that is usually way more interesting than it being right. As long as it isn't just because of some contamination in the data. Although, contrary to what I was taught in elementary school, most of the experiments in the physics department of my university didn't even really have a hypothesis. They were usually either of the form "we are going to do this thing, and see what happens", or "we're going to measure this thing more accurately than anyone before".

tombert 2y ago
So I'm not a "scientist" really, I'm just a bit more of a theory-focused software engineer. An example has been times where I really want to use a certain concurrency style, and I'm convinced that it should be faster than the way we're doing things before, so I will write a few non-trivial tests to make sure that's right, and I'll get inconclusive numbers.
- thayne 2y ago
  That's still an interesting result. If you thought it would have a significant impact, and it doesn't, that means something is wrong with your mental model that lead you to think it would be faster. And if you can figure out why, that can help you find a solution that is faster. Of course, that is still very frustrating if you are on a tight deadline and all you have is one thing you know doesn't work.
  - tombert 2y ago
    No doubt that it's interesting, but when there's deadlines that I need to meet "Throughput level X", and it's also infuriating when the theory isn't lining up with reality.

SkyBelow 2y ago

Not just the mindset. Our social setting can deem some hypothesis must be true and any disagreement is blasphemy of the highest order. The 'softer' a science, the more beliefs like this that exist. Sometimes you can even see scientists deeply studying something adjacent to one of these beliefs start to question it and how delicately they have to dance around the issue until enough other scientists also question that they have the safety in numbers to begin directly questioning the belief. A reoccurring example of this is the research around the labeling of certain behaviors as abnormal psychology which eventually lead to an update in the DSM.