As Popper (1959) has repeatedly argued,scientists cannot know the results of their research in advance. All scientistsare trying to understand the world in which they live, but only a smallpercentage succeed. Science as a process looks so directional because of theretrospective bias that we bring to it…Most research fails or leads nowhere. Ofthe research that finds its way into print, most has no appreciable effect(Hull, 1988:474).

    正如波普尔(1959)反复强调认为，科学家不可能事先知道他们研究的结果。所有的科学家都在努力理解人类生存的世界，但只有很少一部分人成功了。作为一个过程，科学看起来具有很强的方向性，那是因为我们把过去的偏见带给了科学……。大部分研究失败了，或者没有任何结果。在能够把其成果发表的研究中，大部分没有有价值的结果 (Hull) 。