How did you think up your hypothesis?

Question: How did you think up your hypothesis?
- Keywords:
  hypothesis
Asked by palmerrachael14 to Laura, Nicola, Norman, Sandra, Thanasis on 12 Mar 2013.
- Laura Soul answered on 12 Mar 2013:
  
  The exact hypothesis I’m working on now I thought up because I was reading some research that people did about why animals in the present are going extinct, and I wondered if I could figure that out for ancient animals, so I thought up a way of testing that.
  
  Most scientists get their ideas from reading about what other people have done before and then thinking of things that they missed out, or a new way of looking at it.
- Nicola Wardrop answered on 12 Mar 2013:
  
  for the research I am doing now, I thought up the hypothesis in 2009, when I was finishing writing my PhD thesis (the big book you have to write to get a PhD!). I got to the discussion section and was trying to make sense of the results I had, but there were still lots of questions in my head. I knew that cows could be infected by the disease I was looking at, and that they were the reason the disease was spreading, but I didn’t know exactly what the relationship was between the amount of disease (the percentage of the cows that are infected) in cows and the risk to humans.
  
  I did lots of reading, and couldn’t believe that no one had ever looked at this before. It kind of grew from there – the main thing I wanted to look at was how risk to human health varies with different percentages of cows infected with the disease. That was almost 4 years ago now – it has taken me a while to get to the stage where I can actually investigate that particular hypothesis…I was working on some other things in between. I’m really excited that I am now finally going to try and answer the questions!
- Sandra Phinbow answered on 12 Mar 2013:
  
  I haven’t thought up a hypothesis, because I don’t work in research, my job is clinical and we make a diagnosis on patients. My job is medical and healthcare related.
  
  But if I had to carry out some research and think up a hypothesis I would have a read around to see what work had already been done on the area I was interesed in, I would look to see if there were any gaps in the information or if I could improve on their idea.
  
  Or maybe I would look at testing out new stains, or new antibodies on the issue sections we make – I could look to see which were the best at allowing us to visualise cells, which ones are more sensitive?

Question: How did you think up your hypothesis?

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