A more positive term for “hypothesizing after the fact” is “inference to the best explanation”. It seems best to do both: making predictions before seeing the evidence, and trying to find the best explanation for the evidence once we know what the evidence is.
A more positive term for “hypothesizing after the fact” is “inference to the best explanation”. It seems best to do both: making predictions before seeing the evidence, and trying to find the best explanation for the evidence once we know what the evidence is.