Which of the following could replace 'speculate' as used in the passage?

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and select the most suitable option according to the corresponding number in the passage.

Scientists want their work represented as science – but journalists want to communicate with the public, and the main tool they have at their disposal is the story. Science, on the other hand, is less concerned with narrative than with results. Scientists speak to other scientists through their work.  Reputations are based on careful accumulation of facts, and a professional reluctance to speculate. Out here among the populace, where, as the Jimmy Stewart character says in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, people “do most of the working and paying and living and dying,” we communicate in the language of story. Stories need beginnings, middles, and endings.  They need tension and drama and resolution. All of these are anathema to any particular bit of science. Science only proceeds as a story in the big historical sweep of things.