What is a well tested hypothesis?

Answer 1

Once a hypothesis is tested and the results are replicated through further testing, the hypothesis can be said to be proven or disproven. Even if a hypothesis is disproven, the results can be very important and should not be considered a failure under most circumstances.

Answer 2

A well-tested hypothesis is one proven, through repeated experiments and careful observation, to be either right or wrong. An example: you're William Perkin, a chemistry student in England in 1856. Your professor knows quinine is an important drug--it treats malaria. He also knows quinine is hard to get because it's made out of the bark of a tree that only grows in one place. So he asks you to create synthetic quinine. You know the chemical formula of quinine is C20H24N2O2, and you create a hypothesis that oxidizing aniline with potassium dichromate will create quinine. So you write in your lab notebook, "my hypothesis is that the product of a dichromate oxidation of aniline will be quinine." It's a good thing Perkin didn't enter his experiment in an American science fair that demands you prove your hypothesis right, because the product of that reaction isn't quinine. It's mauveine, a purple dye--one so good it launched the entire synthetic chemical industry.