Unlimited Hypothesis Research
- Montreal Genome Centre, Montreal General Hospital Research Institute, Montreal, PQ, H3G 1A4, Canada
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Iread with great interest and a certain amount of perturbation the August Editorial by Laurie Goodman (1999). In sharp disagreement with the author, I believe that rather than being the “most efficient means of advancing our scientific understanding” hypothesis-free data collection would be completely devoid of any advancement at all. It is indeed the hypothesis that “follows the data”. No one would argue that a hypothesis springs de novo, but to believe that the data alone will formulate our further understanding is misguided.
Referring to the rendering of some monumental hypotheses as “discoveries of surprise,” Goodman further neglects to state that they were testable hypotheses and tested they were. Goodman states that some of these more famous scientific discoveries “met with resistance” because of the limitations provided by the current hypothesis. Hopefully the truly profound discoveries to come from high-throughput genomics research will also meet with resistance, for what a dull scientific world we would inhabit without the vigorous scientific debate that now accompanies the advancement of knowledge. The challenges to any new hypothesis and its limitations will only strengthen our understanding in the long run.
As Goodman points out, working too hard to fit or bend the data to a hypothesis …
