In philosophy of science, strong inference is a model of scientific inquiry that emphasizes the need for alternative hypotheses, rather than a single hypothesis to avoid confirmation bias.
The problem with single hypotheses, confirmation bias, was aptly described by Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin in 1897: The moment one has offered an original explanation for a phenomenon which seems satisfactory, that moment affection for [one’s] intellectual child springs into existence, and as the explanation grows into a definite theory [one’s] parental affections cluster about [the] offspring and it grows more and more dear ....
If there is a shared enthrallment among the reviewers in a commonly believed hypothesis, then innovation becomes difficult because alternative hypotheses are not seriously considered, and sometimes not even permitted.
[3][4] In such methods, the first step is the nullification of the single hypothesis by assuming that the true information of the system under study is only partially known.
[5] The original paper outlining strong inference has been criticized, particularly for overstating the degree that certain fields used this method.