[bryanlarsen]

Yes, that's the way science should be done. But look at the number of negative result papers that get published, et cetera. How much push does a negative result give your career vs a positive one? Who's interested in spending ten years of their career pushing a test for a hypothesis that most people (and likely themselves) think is negative? And of course the microscope cannot prove the negative hypothesis, nor does it really help the negative hypothesis much.