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You do realize, I hope, that the scientific method is a joke.

Scientific Method

Purpose: Explain topic or need for research.
Question: Put your topic into a question that will be answered by your research.
Research: Find out background information about your topic so that you can predict an answer to your question. (Be sure to prejudice yourself before you begin.)
Hypothesis: After you've done your research, make a prediction as to what you think the answer to your question is. This is your hypothesis. (This part brings in the grant $$$$. Remember: too many incorrect hypotheses will limit future funding.)
Experiment: This is the actual experiment that you will conduct. List your materials and procedure including your constants (control) and variable.
Analysis: This is the data you have collected. Display it in tables, graphs, and be sure to include a significant portion of anecdotal evidence and single, unrepeatable occurrences. If your data does not fit your (grant funded) hypothesis, adjust your norm and eliminate "erroneous" data and anomalies.
Conclusion:State why your hypothesis was correct or incorrect. (Warning: It had better be correct. If it's not, adjust data to fit.)

The most widely accepted form of popular science is "consensus science". After all, if 3 out of 4 agree, then it must be so.

If the scientific community wants to regain respect from the majority of "common people", it must abandon the prejudicial "scientific method", it must balk at "consensus science", it must reject conclusions based in mathematical theory and it must return to peer review of repeatable laboratory experiment as the sole determinant of conclusions.

Disclaimer: The above sarcasm is directed primarily towards the nonproductive branches of science, such as ecology, paleontology and meteorology.

Scientific Method
Purpose: Explain topic or need for research.
Question: Put your topic into a question that will be answered by your research.
Research: Find out background information about your topic so that you can predict an answer to your question. (Be sure to prejudice yourself before you begin.)
Hypothesis: After you've done your research, make a prediction as to what you think the answer to your question is. This is your hypothesis. (This part brings in the grant $$$$. Remember: too many incorrect hypotheses will limit future funding.)
Experiment: This is the actual experiment that you will conduct. List your materials and procedure including your constants (control) and variable.
Analysis: This is the data you have collected. Display it in tables, graphs, and be sure to include a significant portion of anecdotal evidence and single, unrepeatable occurrences. If your data does not fit your (grant funded) hypothesis, adjust your norm and eliminate "erroneous" data and anomalies.
Conclusion:State why your hypothesis was correct or incorrect. (Warning: It had better be correct. If it's not, adjust data to fit.)

The most widely accepted form of popular science is "consensus science". After all, if 3 out of 4 agree, then it must be so.

If the scientific community wants to regain respect from the majority of "common people", it must abandon the prejudicial "scientific method", it must balk at "consensus science", it must reject conclusions based in mathematical theory and it must return to peer review of repeatable laboratory experiment as the sole determinant of conclusions.

Bookmarked.

You show a lack of understanding of the scientific method.

A scientist learns everything possible about the background in order to determine what is not known, and to narrow down the research focus to an area that (hopefully) twenty or thirty competing scientists aren't already working on. It's not that easy. A good scientist keeps up with the literature (and I'm not talking Shakespeare). It's not prejudicing oneself to know everything knowable about the subject.

As far as the hypothesis goes, there are many levels of hypotheses. There's the big hypothesis that provides a framework upon which to design an experimental approach. From that big hypothesis, one makes little hypotheses that are useful for designing individual experiments. Yes, you try to predict the results. So what if the result doesn't match the prediction? You revise the hypothesis, design a new experiment, run it, repeat it if it works and supports the hypothesis (everything is repeated at least 3 times to verify), or if it doesn't work, sit down and think about it some more.

It doesn't matter if the hypothesis is incorrect. That's not what granting committees are looking for. They want to see a hypothesis based on valid scientific principle, and a reasonable experimental outline that will confirm or disprove the hypothesis. That's all.

It is possible to publish results that do not agree with the stated hypothesis, and to use those results to propose one or more new hypotheses--and they can contradict each other, and that is okay. It is also okay to publish results that contradict previously published results.

I once proposed a hypothesis on which to base my research. I got a PhD, but never did prove my hypothesis. I never disproved it, either, so it's still usable...