Hypothesis use in the context of other forms of reasoning and logic in ecology
While I agree with Betts et al.’s points about how hypotheses are excellent for being explicit, thinking through multiple possibilities, and avoiding your own biases, I cannot agree with what I take to be their argument that the hypothetico-deductive process is the culmination of science practice. In general, epistemology, like the ecological world itself that is our subject, is heterogenous, varying, and complex (see Liebenberg 2013). As I indicated above, our disciplinary line-drawing around living things does not mean that they are a uniform collection of phenomena that all behave in pre-identified ways. The identification of problems, and the reasoning approaches needed to answer questions about those problems, works well when it mirrors the heterogenous, varying, and interacting structure of living systems, through the use of a mix of multiple forms of reasoning, argumentation and logic. Hypothetico-deductive methods are of course a hallmark of science, and are powerful if used intelligently (following many of the suggestions in Betts et al.), and if not over-applied to every question. The real question is not whether to use hypotheses, but how to recognise and develop a question that can be best answered with a hypothetico-deductive process. This is not an easy question to answer, and although many experienced ecologists and other scientists develop a sense of how to track down and corner a good hypothesis, this is something we should discuss more in order to develop disciplinary aesthetics or styles around hypothesis formation (Root-Bernstein 2002; Eastwood et al. 2013).
The equally important corrolary to this is how to recognise a question that can best be answered with other forms of reasoning, logic, and argument. This is especially true if we consider the need to engage in interdisciplinary research to more fully understand socioecological systems (Root-Bernstein 2016), or the desireability of engaging with indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in conservation and ecology projects (Wheeler & Root-Bernstein 2020). Having a range of forms of reasoning, logic, and argumentation proper to ecology that go beyond statistical answers to questions posed as hypotheses will provide multiple avenues for communication and collaboration. There is also, in my view, a benefit to the explicit recognition that ecological science has (or should have) its own set of arguments, logic and reasoning, and that it has (or should have) styles and aesthetics of different qualities of reasoning. It is relatively more difficult to collaborate with ILK holders if your only account for why you use the hypothetico-deductive method is that it directly reveals the true structure of the universe. When we can discuss our aesthetics and logics around good hypothesis use, we open the door to being relativistic in a constructive/ productive way.