3 Seeing as a Scientist

When you were a baby, one of the first patterns most of you recognized was the face of your mom. Not even the whole body. Just the face. And as adults, we still tend to see faces everywhere—in tree bark, in the clouds, even on a cheese sandwich (including the famous one looking like the Virgin Mary, now on display in a Las Vegas casino). That drive to look for patterns is both a tremendous strength and a horrible weakness. But science helps us overcome some of the worst weaknesses.

The scientific method is built upon looking for observations, but it adds a crucial step—testing the resulting predictions. It works like this:

1. Make observations. Look around and see things that aren’t apparent. Focus. Really see.

2. Check for patterns. Do things occur the same way over and over?

3. Guess why. (This is our hypothesis). Unfortunately, our tendency at this point is to blame things we don’t like upon people we don’t like. “An Iranian cleric says earthquakes are due to promiscuous women.” Hah. We’d never be that stupid in the U.S. Yeah? Rev. John Hagee said Hurricane Katrina was due to a planned gay pride celebration. Go figure.

4. Use your hypothesis to make a prediction that you can test. In fact, the ability to test a hypothesis is what makes our educated guess scientific. Are results/patterns reproducible? Does data support your prediction or explanation? When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the gay section of town was relatively unaffected. But over 900 churches plus a couple of seminaries were destroyed. Did God miss?

5. Revise your explanation/hypothesis and try again. Science keeps try to do better. No answer is The Final Answer. We can do better.

Certainly, data is open to interpretation. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But there are limits, eh? Calling a groundhog a bird won’t help it fly. Thinking about the data and reasoning that supports an assertion is a key part of scientific literacy, a major reason for requiring a lab-science course as part of almost every college curriculum in the U.S.A.

The observations a geologist makes deal with the entire Earth. Much of the public thinks geology is about rocks. That’s part of it, for sure. But the rocks are just the words that make up the story. The Story of the Earth is far bigger, encompassing billions of years plus air, water, and rocks, elements and minerals, but mainly the processes that change the Earth. Science is not so much about what you believe but the patterns you observe, over and over. You may not believe in gravity, but if you slip on the ice, you’ll still bust your ass. Understanding that is science in a nutshell.

Notes on a Geologic Investigation:

An example: Geologists hypothesize that the Mediterranean Sea was once early dry. Let’s walk through the scientific method and see how they got to that hypothesis:

Geologic observations can come from a variety of direct and indirect measurements. Like an ultrasound can observe a developing baby, seismology uses soundwaves to peer inside the belly of Mother Earth. Seismologists observed a layer beneath the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea tat was widespread and pretty much followed the shape of the sea bottom. The next step, like operating on the baby, was to drill into the seafloor. The first layer was muds that settle out of standing water. But beneath that were layers of evaporites (minerals that form from evaporated sea water), such as gypsum and salt. They also encountered old dunes, windblown in in form. How can we explain such observations? We guess (our hypothesis) that the Mediterranean dried out.

How could such an event happen?

The Mediterranean Sea is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by a small opening, the Straits of Gibraltar. The African Plate is moving north into Eurasia, shifting elevations, opening and closing connections. In addition, periods of glaciation can lower sea level. Some combination cut off the flow of seawater from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, which has high evaporation rates because of its climate. Eventually, sea level rose or the land dropped sufficiently that seawater began to trickle back into the Mediterranean. As it flowed, it began eroding its path, then flowing faster, then eroding faster, refilling the Mediterranean.

But we’re not done with the scientific method. Our hypothesis leads to some other predictions that we can test. What could be some other evidence? How about mud cracks and incised stream channels? They’ve both been found. Geologists are still working on refining the mechanism by which the Mediterranean dried out, but the theory that it did indeed dry out is well confirmed.

For more on this topic, see [here.]