The worst is college science classes where sometimes the provided equipment and/or procedures aren't even correct, and the professor isn't around and you're dealing with a TA who is just as confused as you are.

So you debate with yourself between writing down the effect you got (and trusting that you will be rewarded for integrity and effort and rigor), or simply writing down what you know the effect was supposed to be.

Most people (smartly) do the latter.

Sure, but you have to remember why that is the smart choice: because you are in a terrible class (and probably a bad school) that will make as little effort as possible to teach anything at all.

Don't expect the same choices to make sense if you go somewhere people actually care, that would make you a bad student.