title: Why are we not evaluating multiple competing hypotheses in ecology and evolution?
abstract: The use of multiple working hypotheses to gain strong inference is widely promoted as a means to enhance the effectiveness of scientific investigation. Only 21 of 100 randomly selected studies from the ecological and evolutionary literature tested more than one hypothesis and only eight tested more than two hypotheses. The surprising rarity of application of multiple working hypotheses suggests that this gap between theory and practice might reflect some fundamental issues. Here, we identify several intellectual and practical barriers that discourage us from using multiple hypotheses in our scientific investigation. While scientists have developed a number of ways to avoid biases, such as the use of double-blind controls, we suspect that few scientists are fully aware of the potential influence of cognitive bias on their decisions and they have not yet adopted many techniques available to overcome intellectual and practical barriers in order to improve scientific investigation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology , University of Guelph , Guelph, Ontario , Canada N1G 2W1.
authors.forename: Gustavo S
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0707-4128
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Betini
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, CanadaN1G 2W1; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2E9.
authors.forename: Tal
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Avgar
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology , University of Guelph , Guelph, Ontario , Canada N1G 2W1.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Fryxell
keywords: Chamberlin; Platt; model selection; scientific method; strong inference