Iterate

I read LEARNING MUSIC FROM EACH OTHER: SYNCHRONIZATION, TURN-TAKING, OR IMITATION?

I wonder: how did the authors settle on the three forms of practicing suggested? Why did they not iterate towards what works, like one might in design work? Why bother doing fancy stats when you’ve just chosen three methods randomly?

(What is it about the scientific method that seems to want to avoid iteration? Is it that we want on thing to work better than the other, to have results, or do we want to explore the space of the possible?)