Francesco redi's experiment to disprove abiogenesis
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The dependent variable was what resulted from leaving the control group open, which was the appearance of maggots. He discovered that maggots appeared on the meat in the control jar, the jar left open. No maggots appeared in the jar covered with gauze. In Redi's experiment, the results supported his hypothesis
Francesco Redi was able to disprove the theory that maggots could be spontaneously generated from meat using a controlled experiment. Spontaneous generation, the theory that life forms can be generated from inanimate objects, had been around since at least the time of Aristotle. Francesco took eight jars, placed meat in all the jars, but covered four of the jars with muslin. Maggots developed in the open jars but did not develop in the muslin-covered jars. Today controlled experiments are commonly demanded by scientific journals and are sometimes legally required by regulatory bodies (especially for pharmaceuticals). The image below is taken from Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl' Insetti (p. 187) where Francesco Redi published a description of the experiment in 1668 (see sidebar for digital copies of book).