Look at it this way. If i want to make a business of rebuilding a engines, I could absolutely google it up "how to rebuild an engine", and get the "results" I need. However, Those results showing step by step how to do it, are absolutely no replacement for actually having properly rebuilt an engine, with someone guiding me along, to the final result with all the nuts and bolts and parts in the right places. And to make a business of such a task, I need to do it over and over again, until the proper process is instilled into me. The whole point of "Teaching Science" is not to get students to make brand new discovery, it is to teach them how to work in a proper scientific manner. The new discovery comes later in life, once they have been properly trained in the basics of how to DO science, which is what high school level science is really for.
I'm not saying that
if you get wrong results (although your data shows it) you get bad mark.
I'm saying that, in an educational setting, the student should be performing an experiment the teacher knows the outcomes of. If done properly, result A is produced. If poor procedure is followed, result B is the expected result. The student would be expected to perform the experiment to the best of their ability, trying to follow proper procedure. Ideally, they perform the test at least three times. Then, they write up their findings. Now, This is the "teachable moment" as we are so fond of calling it, the actual educational part of all this. The teacher reveals the intended results of the experiment. Then the students are tasked with reviewing their work, and discovering where mistakes in their procedure where made that caused result B, instead of result A. Perhaps at this stage, the students are tasked with performing the experiment one more time, this time correcting the error, to see how proper procedure results in result A. In a well designed exercise, Both result A and result B in the experiment produce fascinating results, thus investing students interest in science. (A fair amount of classroom science has results where A is interesting, and B is not, which also can spur a desire to learn how to do the process correctly, allowing for the exciting result.)
The point is, to foster an interest in science, while instilling in the student the knowledge and skills required to perform scientific processes with the appropriate rigor and technique. Once this is very well mastered, students move on to designing and executing their own experiments. As we have seen here, there is a great deal of discussion as to the various places proper scientific process was or was not followed in these students experiment. Couple that with the fact that the phenomena they are attempting to study is still in great debate by professional scientists around the world, and you have students set up in a situation where, despite having performed an experiment, they have not really learned anything about how to do science properly.