But if their “experiment” had created a thriving business, would they have declared their hypothesis a “success”?
Yes, they would have.
And so since it did not thrive, their disproven hypothesis shows that their effort was a “failure”.
They might have called it a success, but scientifically that’s not the right term. They successfully proved their hypothesis, or they successfully disproved it. Either one is really a success. The term failure would imply the experiment wasn’t truly unbiased, and did the opposite of the intended result. In which case it’s not actually an experiment.
I’m just arguing semantics :p It’s a boring drill weekend!