Most undergraduate-level geoscience texts offer a paltry introduction to the nuanced approach to hypothesis testing that geoscientists use when conducting research and writing proposals. Fortunately, there are a handful of excellent papers that are accessible to geoscience undergraduates. Two historical papers by the eminent American geologists G. K. Gilbert and T. C. Chamberlin (Gilbert, 1886; Chamberlin, 1897) were the first to fully articulate and explore the method of multiple working hypotheses. Both papers still make for inspirational reading. A long essay on the scientific method by Johnson (1933) presents both a recipe for rigorous scientific thinking and a traditional but detailed articulation of linear hypothesis testing using geologic examples. More recently, papers by Frodeman (1995) about the fundamentally non-linear nature of interpretation and reasoning in the geosciences and Cleland (2001) about a "smoking gun" approach to validating hypotheses are helpful articulations of the geoscientific method, i.e. a shared understanding of how geoscientists articulate, frame, and tackle research questions.