@justinpombrio is right that Bayesian updates move probability estimates between hypotheses, not towards or away from specific hypotheses.
Yes, clearly, we made a mistake in our hypotheses about this experiment. Professor, you believe the mistake was in how you all applied Newtonian mechanics to the experimental system. Students, you believe that Newtonian mechanics is in some way incorrect.
Each of you, go and make a list of all the assumptions you made in setting up and carrying out the experiment, along with your priors for the likelihood of each.
Compare lists, make sure you’re in agreement on what the set of potential failure points is for where you went wrong.
Then figure out how to update your probabilities based on this result, and what experiment to perform next.
(Basically, the students’ world models are too narrow to even realize how many things they’re assuming away, and then pointing a figure at the only thing they knew to think of as a variable. And the professor (and all past science teachers they’ve had) failed to articulate what it was they were actually teaching and why).
@justinpombrio is right that Bayesian updates move probability estimates between hypotheses, not towards or away from specific hypotheses.
Yes, clearly, we made a mistake in our hypotheses about this experiment. Professor, you believe the mistake was in how you all applied Newtonian mechanics to the experimental system. Students, you believe that Newtonian mechanics is in some way incorrect.
Each of you, go and make a list of all the assumptions you made in setting up and carrying out the experiment, along with your priors for the likelihood of each.
Compare lists, make sure you’re in agreement on what the set of potential failure points is for where you went wrong.
Then figure out how to update your probabilities based on this result, and what experiment to perform next.
(Basically, the students’ world models are too narrow to even realize how many things they’re assuming away, and then pointing a figure at the only thing they knew to think of as a variable. And the professor (and all past science teachers they’ve had) failed to articulate what it was they were actually teaching and why).