A hypothesis must be testable and ____-- there must be some observation or experiment that could show that it is not true.

• A. Falsifiable
• B. Inductive Reasoning
• C. Hypothesis
• D. Controlled Experiment

Answer: (A)

Falsifiability is the key idea: a hypothesis must be testable in such a way that an observation or experiment could show it to be false. This allows science to be capable of refutation and refinement. For example, the statement “All swans are white” makes a clear prediction that can be tested by looking for a swan of a different color. Finding even one nonwhite swan would falsify the claim. If a statement cannot be shown false by any observation, it isn’t scientifically testable because there’s no way to reject it. Inductive reasoning is about deriving general conclusions from specific observations, but it isn’t the requirement that a statement be testable for falsity. A hypothesis is the statement being tested, but the emphasis here is on its ability to be proven false, not just on being a hypothesis. A controlled experiment is a method for testing, not the criterion that makes a hypothesis scientifically meaningful.