How Science Actually Works: Observation & Hypothesis

The idea that what you notice is shaped by what you already expect — Galileo saw moons around Jupiter because he was entertaining a Copernican picture, while others saw mere specks.

Schiaparelli's *canali* (channels) became Lowell's hundreds of intelligent-made 'canals' — the same planet and eyes, but expectation manufactured features that don't exist.

To keep prior beliefs from contaminating the data. This habit underlies lab notebooks, instrument logs, and pre-registered study plans.

It commits you to something: it is testable, falsifiable, makes risky predictions that forbid outcomes, and is parsimonious.

A claim does scientific work only if some specific outcome could count against it. If nothing could ever refute it, it isn't science.

One that forbids things — general relativity predicted starlight bending by 1.75 arcseconds, not 'some amount', so Eddington's 1919 eclipse could have killed it.

Uranus's odd orbit led to the discovery of Neptune (1846), saving Newton; Mercury's anomaly led to the hunt for Vulcan, which failed and waited for Einstein. Identical reasoning, opposite outcomes.

You never test a hypothesis alone — it comes bundled with instruments, assumptions, and background theory. A failed prediction says something in the bundle is wrong, not which thing.

The everyday puzzle-solving scientists do inside an accepted framework, rather than constantly overturning it.

'People holding a crystal report lower anxiety scores than people holding an identical glass stone, with both sides blinded' — testable, and a positive result would reveal a placebo effect.