How scientists reason : the use of unexpected findings

While there is much data in the experimental cognitive psychology literature reporting that subjects working on science-like tasks ignore findings inconsistent with their hypotheses, much cognitive science research has found that reasoners focus on unexpected findings. To study how real-world scientists deal with unexpected findings, data was collected from a prominent immunology laboratory. Four lab meetings were analyzed using a standardized coding procedure. The amount of reasoning, interactions, and new hypotheses about unexpected versus expected findings was analyzed. Presenters at the meetings reasoned more about unexpected than expected findings, and group members reasoned and interacted extensively about unexpected findings. Both presenter and group members formed more new hypotheses about unexpected than about expected findings. These results are consistent with the finding in cognitive science research that reasoners focus on unexpected data. It is proposed that several heuristics influence which unexpected findings scientists pay attention to