What you should learn about scientific research

 under construction

All students of science should know about the scientific method:

                    1. Observation

                    2. Hypothesis

                    3. Experiment

                    4. Interpretation

As it turns out most of us are capable of making some sort of significant observation, e.g. why is the sky blue? However, your powers of observation will be enhanced by years of experience in the lab. To some extent your formal education will help you formulate a hypothesis, but again this comes with practice and hard work over the years. Design of the experiments to test the hypothesis is not emphasized in your formal education and this seems only to come with laboratory experience. Finally, interpretation of experimental results and how they affect the hypothesis may seem straight forward but remember that most experiments fail in some fashion. This often results in a early to mid- career angst in the graduate student, nothing is working! However, you will find with maturity that you can closely examine the experimental results for unforeseen trends, that will aid you in modifying the hypothesis to better predict the phenomenon.