‘Make it hypothetical’
What: Argue that you have analysed a useful hypothetical case, which is correct according to its assumptions
Use when: your analysis describes conditions that may not actually reflect reality, but are meaningful because they represent, for example, a typical or idealised situation that is of specific interest to the reader. For example, many hydro-economic models can either be thought to depend on specific assumptions about decision making (‘Define scope of applicability’) or as a benchmark of the ‘best’ outcome that can be achieved under idealised circumstances (‘Make it hypothetical’).
Why: Frames uncertainty in relation to reality as being irrelevant. When considering hypothetical situations, it is less important to consider uncertainty about whether results reflect the real world situation because results take on a meaning of their own. It is common practice to compare ‘what is’ with ‘what could be,’ and hypotheticals therefore have a useful role to play.
How to implement: Explicitly note that the results are not intended to reflect reality, and justify why looking at this hypothetical case is of interest.
How to recognise:
Qualifier indicate result is conditional on grounds. Grounds are described as hypothetical. Arguably, all scientific claims are actually conditional on the method used. They are, however, not necessarily framed as such. It needs to be sufficiently clear that the results are not intended to reflect reality.
Examples of Make-it-hypothetical, showing conditionality on hypothetical grounds (bold) for a primary claim (italics):
- Hypothetical case study for testing
"The method is tested on a series of synthetic examples where it gives good results and shows potential for the integration of different measurement methods in real-case hydrogeological models." 2014WR016150. The utility of the hypothetical case is then justified in the last statement as Step-towards-a-goal
- Hypothetical environment for method development
"A laboratory-generated hierarchical, fully heterogeneous aquifer model (FHM) provides a reference for developing and testing an upscaling approach ... Comparing flow and transport predictions of the HSMs against those of the reference model, HSMs capturing connectivity at increasing resolutions are more accurate, although upscaling errors increase with system variance" 2014WR016202. Note that the first claim is also Make-it-relative due to use of "more accurate".
- Emphasis on the method "the method indicates ..."
"The reconstructions indicate that twentieth century conditions were well within the range of historical variability" 2015WR017062