give at least 1 reason why an experiment might not support a hypothesis even when the hypothesis is correct?

Answer 1

The experiment was not conducted properly.

Answer 2

One reason could be not a large enough sampling was used. The larger of a sampling is used the more accurate the experiment will tend to be.

Another reason could be that a factor that affects the outcome was not considered and controlled. For instance you might do an experiment on plants to see which soil grows the plant better, but the room could be unevenly heated or lighted which would throw off your results. Or the plants might not have gotten watered the exact same amounts.

The main things to remember is keep the sample large. The larger the sample the better your chances of being correct. The other thing to remember is to make sure that you keep EVERYTHING EXACTLY THE SAME except for the one point that you are wanting to test. Sometimes even the most minute difference can affect the results. For instance if you were doing a test on crops, you could have the same soil, and they get the same water amount, same fertilizer and everything. But one crop might be closer to a gravel road. The dust from that gravel road could provide more lime to the ground and make it less acidic thereby possibly growing better or worse.

The test may not have enough randomness to it. Meaning it may not look at the problem from enough different angles. For instance, in package testing they will put packages on vibration table. Normally when a package travels on a semi trailer the package will go through a certain range of frequencies of vibrations. The old testing method before computers became integrated into the testing was to slowly but surely run the frequency up from the lowest to highest frequency it would see and look for resonancies or basically certain frequencies that would shake the package apart. Some parts could make it through the range of frequencies test but would still fail on the actual road due to vibration. The problem was better understood when they added a computer to the simulation. They put a vibration tracker in the semi trailer then could plug that data into the computer and completely resimulate the vibrations the package saw. What made the package fail was the randomness of two frequencies crossing over each other, almost like playing two offnotes on a piano. You would think that since it could make it through the entire range that it could make it through a ride, but the randomness was not taken into account.

Answer 3

Most likely if the hypothesis is correct, which is not implied since it is called a hypothesis. Then the exeriment proves the hypothesis to be correct or incorrect, or the experiment was flawed in at least one of its stages.
Perhaps the hypothesis has restrictions that are not obvious ( true under certain circumstances only).

Answer 4

If the experiment as performed poorly and things measured inaccurately, then the results will be flawed. That's why, to prove a hypothesis, experiments are usually performed repeatedly. This helps to reduce human error.

Answer 5

Not all experiments are high quality or relevant to the topic.

Answer 6

It is the wrong experiment.

Answer 7

You ran out of funding.

Answer 8

You were sloppy gathering data.

Answer 9

probability of accuracy was too narrow or broad