On the scope of scientific hypotheses

Hypotheses are frequently the starting point when undertaking the empirical portion of the scientific process. They state something that the scientific process will attempt to evaluate, corroborate, verify or falsify. Their purpose is to guide the types of data we collect, analyses we conduct, and inferences we would like to make. Over the last decade, metascience has advocated for hypotheses being in preregistrations or registered reports, but how to formulate these hypotheses has received less attention. Here, we argue that hypotheses can vary in specificity along at least three independent dimensions: the relationship, the variables, and the pipeline. Together, these dimensions form the scope of the hypothesis. We demonstrate how narrowing the scope of a hypothesis in any of these three ways reduces the hypothesis space and that this reduction is a type of novelty. Finally, we discuss how this formulation of hypotheses can guide researchers to formulate the appropriate scope for their hypotheses and should aim for neither too broad nor too narrow a scope. This framework can guide hypothesis-makers when formulating their hypotheses by helping clarify what is being tested, chaining results to previous known findings, and demarcating what is explicitly tested in the hypothesis.

Automated summary

Hypotheses are crucial in guiding the scientific process by stating what will be evaluated or tested. However, the formulation of hypotheses has received less attention compared to methods like preregistrations. This article argues that hypotheses can vary in specificity along three dimensions, and narrowing their scope can lead to novelty in research.