What has been summarized and characterized is scientific reasoning deemed by the editors of Science to be worthy of publication in Science. I chose Science as the source of material for analysis of the character of modern scientific reasoning because I thought most readers would agree that the work published there is of the highest scientific quality. A drawback of this choice is that there are valid forms of scientific reasoning not normally represented in Science because of the policy of its editors. Consequently the analysis presented here is incomplete, even though it is sufficient for my purpose which is to demonstrate the existence of two main fundamentally different reasoning processes. For example, epidemiological papers are rarely published in Science. Epidemiological reasoning does not readily fit into either of the two kinds of scientific reasoning discussed in this section.
As a second example, consider the work of Mendel. He grew pea plants, counted the numbers of cross-breeds that had certain specific characteristics in each generation, and generalized the results to reach his laws. This form of scientific reasoning does not normally appear in Science because it is neither deductive nor hypothesis-driven. The point is that there are valid forms of scientific reasoning in addition to the forms of scientific reasoning that appear in the pages of Science.