Abstract
We have covered a lot of ground in this book. We began in Chap. 2 by discussing the process of scientific research, including the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method. As we discussed, this process begins with the construction of a succinct research question and hypothesis that has the key property of being falsifiable. As we showed, the goal of scientific research is to falsify hypotheses derived from larger explantions for how the world works. We can never prove our hypotheses to be true, and so the best we can do is rule out bad hypotheses. Explanations that generate hypotheses that cannot be rejected after extended testing eventually become recognized as theories, the ultimate status for a scientific explanation of the world.
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Lynch, S.M. (2013). Conclusion. In: Using Statistics in Social Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8573-5_12
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