Question

a group of scientists develops a hypothesis to explain some observations they have made. they perform an experiment and decide that their results support their hypothesis. what must occur for their discovery to add to the body of scientific knowledge? they must repeat their experiment and get the same results. their results must be confirmed by the experiments of other scientists. they must change their hypothesis and see if it is also supported. they must publish their results for other scientists to learn of them.

Explanation:

In the scientific method, for a discovery to be added to scientific knowledge, the results must be reproducible and confirmed by other scientists' experiments. Let's analyze each option:

• Option 1: Repeating their own experiment and getting the same results is part of internal validation, but scientific knowledge requires external validation (other scientists confirming) too. So this is not sufficient.
• Option 2: For a discovery to be part of scientific knowledge, other scientists must be able to replicate and confirm the results. This is a key part of the scientific community's process of validating knowledge.
• Option 3: Changing the hypothesis is not a requirement for adding to scientific knowledge. The hypothesis is tested, and if supported, the results need to be confirmed, not the hypothesis changed.
• Option 4: Publishing results is a way to share, but the crucial part is the results being confirmed by other scientists' experiments, not just publishing.

Answer:

B. Their results must be confirmed by the experiments of other scientists.