Give two competing hypotheses that might be offered to explain each of the following phenomena. Which of these hypotheses is better? Why?
1. You follow a recipe carefully, but the bread never rises.
2. Your house begins to shake so violently that pictures fall off your walls.
3. Your key will not open the door of your house.
4. People start putting television cameras on your lawn, and a man with a big smile comes walking up your driveway.
5. Virtually all of the food in markets has suddenly sold out.
6. You put on a shirt and notice that there is no pocket on the front like there used to be.
7. A cave is found containing the bones of both prehistoric humans and now-extinct predators.
8. A cave is found containing the bones of both prehistoric humans and now-extinct herbivores.
9. After being visited by lobbyists for cigarette producers, your senator votes in favor of tobacco price supports, although he opposed them before.
10. Large, mysterious patterns of flattened wheat appear in the fields of Britain. (Some people attribute these patterns to visitors from another planet.)
11. A palm reader foretells that something wonderful will happen to you soon, and it does.
12. A neighbor sprinkles purple powder on his lawn to keep away tigers, and, sure enough, no tigers show up on his lawn.