In the 1980s, many politicians argued that listening to heavy metal music led teenagers to die by suicide. though you might find this belief silly, it is a(n)

I believe the answer is: hypothesis

Hypothesis is an initial explanation that someone use to explain a certain situation without using empirical evidence. In researching social phenomenons, hypothesis is the first steps in all form of experiments. We pair up independent variable with the subject in order to proof whether our initial hypothesis is correct or not.

the first part is ocean

explanation: