That being said, it is most important that students realize that the scientific method is a form of critical thinking that will be subjected to review and independent duplication in order to reduce the degree of uncertainty. The scientific method may include some or all of the following “steps” in one form or another: observation, defining a question or problem, research (planning, evaluating current evidence), forming a hypothesis, prediction from the hypothesis (deductive reasoning), experimentation (testing the hypothesis), evaluation and analysis, peer review and evaluation, and publication.