Students tend to see examination of the quality of scientific evidence as simply making a judgement about whether the scientists involved had made any mistakes. Students often fail to recognise the inherent uncertainty of measurements and have little idea of how scientists deal with this uncertainty. Few students use ideas about the validity, reliability and repeatability of evidence in evaluating its quality, or recognise the significance of examining the spread of a set of data. The purposes of scientific investigations Students tend to see scientific investigation as a process of careful description. For such students collecting a 'good' set of data is the end of the data interpretation process.
Students often fail to recognise that many investigations involve the testing of ideas.
The need to interpret the data in terms of scientific ideas is not recognised.