A second and more significant difference between the work of an auditor and what has been described as the scientific method has to do with the possibility of controlled experiments. In science, the testing of hypotheses is frequently, but not always, performed through laboratory experiments under which some conditions can be controlled so that the effect of a given factor or factors can be more closely noted. This is not true of an audit. Only under the most unusual conditions would an audit be performed twice, and even if it were, the results would not be equivalent to running a laboratory experiment twice. The timing of audit work is of the essence.
A third difference between applications of the scientific methodologies and auditing is that in auditing the basic assumptions or postulates on which the validity of reasoning rests are not well stated.
The postulates in auditing exist and contribute to our understanding of auditing issues, otherwise we could not reason or come to conclusions in this discipline. The postulates in auditing provide the foundations the researchers in this field need to develop a logical, integrated theory of auditing. The examples of such postulates are as follows: