Comment by cycomanic

On the other hand my experience as both a graduate and professor teaching students are equally discouraging.

1. Most students don't want to have to think. As a student I was always annoyed that we'd be given exact instructions with an exactly know result to reproduce, while this is generally not how real experiments work. So when I designed an experiment I wrote instructions that reflected more the real life experience, I.e. instead of "place the lens A 10mm from object B" it was "place the lens one focal length away from the object, to know the focal length of your lens you can use a light source at Infinity (far away)." after I left my university the instructions were reverted back because students complained that they didn't get step by step instructions.

2. Students dutifully write down a measurements that is of several orders of magnitude with absolutely no acknowledgement/discussion. I have seen speed of light barely faster than a car and mass of a small piece material in 100s of kg (usually because students forget a nano or giga in a calculation), without any discussion that the result is nonsensical.

3. Similar they make a fit like the one in the OP and don't even discuss the error bars. Or (and that's already the better students) they make a fit with tiny error bars, but get the wrong result (typically due to some mistake like above) and in the discussion say the difference to an expected error is due to measurement error.

Now I also know that there are crappy graduate students who teach because they are teaching the "only get the correct result" but it's often very difficult to improve teaching because students will immediately complain that they have to adjust to changes.