How does abduction help scientists explain surprising facts?

For the American philosopher and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce, abduction—which he also termed "retroduction"—is the process of forming and accepting a hypothesis on probation to explain surprising facts.1

Rather than deriving a conclusion that follows necessarily from premises (deduction) or generalizing from observed instances (induction), abduction allows scientists to make "leaps of imagination" to account for data. It functions as an "inference to the best explanation," where a researcher proposes a hypothesis that introduces phenomena not explicitly observed in the data itself to provide a coherent account of the facts.12

Peirce viewed this as a fundamental component of the scientific method, essential for guiding special sciences in forming lower-order hypotheses. By identifying the best possible explanation for a puzzling observation, scientists can bridge the gap between raw data and theoretical understanding, a process exemplified by historical breakthroughs such as Isaac Newton's proposal of universal gravitation to explain planetary motion and tides.12