This phenomenon has had a profound effect on the history and philosophy of science. There have been entire schools of thought based on verification of hypotheses, and entire movements based on refuting those schools. The most effective strategy in this puzzle(and the one that is unintuitive for many) is to systematically generate alternative hypotheses and falsify them. Karl Popper claimed that this method is actually at the core of how we gain scientific knowledge, and his brand of philosophy of science is the most popular and arguably the most successful today.