If a scientist finds that her experimental data do not support her hypothesis or a particular scientific?

Question

theory, she should?

a) Modify the hypothesis and perform another experiment

b) Give up on that hypothesis and find another area of science to research

c) Work to show that the scientific theory is incorrect

d) Both a and b

e) Both b and c

Answer 1

The answers previous to this are correct, but leave out one important item, as do the answer choices to the question.

The critical point is why didn't it work?

Faulty equipment?  Bad statistical methodology?  Did not control for one or more variables?  Because of these and many other reasons,  your hypothesis could still be correct, but the results are erroneous, making it seem the hypothesis is incorrect.  

But for these same reasons a hypothesis that seems to test correct must be verified by others in other labs, by other techniques and equipment.  This is an extremely important part of verifying a hypothesis.

An important part of experiments is knowing your variables and controlling/compensating for them.  The more precise your measurements, the more important the variables.  For instance, if you want a very precise measurement of the mass of a chunk of aluminum, you must, for one thing, correct for the mass of the air it displaces - which varies depending on elevation, temperature and humidity.  But if you need only +/- 1kilo, who cares?

Answer 2

The first step would be a), that is after making sure that her experiment was done correctly.  If the new experiment also didn't support her hypothesis, she should probably discard that hypothesis and work on something else.

Answer 3

The answer is a) but ...

What researchers usually do, is recheck the data, recheck the experiments or add sub-hypothesis and conditions to explains the differences. If this does not work, they throw away the hypothesis and try a new one.

Answer 4

It depends...

"Her hypothesis" could be wrong. But if the experimental outcome does not support an accepted scientific theory, then definitely c)!