Originally Posted by punkworld

Ideally, you would be right. However, when looking at case studies in science and technology studies, it often appears to be otherwise. Scientists have a hunch that something works a certain way, do some general research into their theory, then go to work on finding proof for their theory (rather than putting the theory to the riskiest tests).

Scientists, unfortunately, often do not follow the scientific process as well as they should. It's especially bad in the social sciences, where researchers tend to be appallingly biased.