Ray Buursma: Life lessons from science

It was the most noteworthy inservice lesson I experienced as a teacher, and since I love science, I looked forward to the session’s topic: The Process of Science.

The instructor placed us in groups of four and gave us our materials — a meter stick, graph paper, a calculator, markers, and a bag of balls. Each bag contained a tennis ball, a golf ball, a racquetball, a ping pong ball, and a solid, dense, black ball just smaller than the golf ball.

Our task was to predict the order, by height, the balls would bounce, determine the actual order, and graphically display our results. We made our hypothesis and conducted our experiment. Our simple bar graph represented our results. So far we learned nothing new nor amazing. Hypothesizing, testing, and recording were old hat.

We completed our task and were instructed to do one more thing. Each of us should find two people outside our group and compare graphs. Thereafter we would report the comparisons to our group.

Things got interesting.

Two of our group members reported their comparisons yielded similar results. Another noted her comparisons with colleagues showed their black balls had bounced lowest of the five while ours had bounced highest. We were surprised and a bit confused.

Our first two members objected. “Those others did something wrong. They had to. We were very careful in our measurements. You saw it yourselves. And the two of us saw the same results from the graphs we observed.”

I chimed in. “Wait a minute. One of the people I spoke with had results like ours, but the other had a low-bouncing black ball.”

Things were getting weird.

A group member said, “Well, maybe several made a mistake, and it wasn’t us. We all saw the results. We measured the black ball’s height three times, and I know our results and graphing are accurate. Someone else messed up.”

The wiser ones in the room recognized something was amiss. They conjectured there might be differences in the black balls. They wanted to examine and retest black balls from other groups. The instructor gave permission to do so.

Lo and behold, we discovered there were two distinct types of black balls — high bouncers and low bouncers. But they looked exactly alike. Had we been set up?

“You cheated,” someone accused the instructor, much like a middle-schooler might react.

“There is no cheating in science,” the instructor replied. “There is only bad process or inaccurate data. Did any of you use bad process or alter data?”

Of course, the answer was no.

We learned a lesson. We all knew, used, and taught MOST of the scientific process. Sadly, we did a poor job with peer review. Rather than approach incompatible data with curiosity and logic, some claimed inconsistent results were due to incompetence and even cheating.

But humans often react this way.

Fossils of fish are found in mountains, so there must have been a worldwide flood, and that means the story of Noah must be true, right? Noah’s tale couldn’t possibly be a folk tale designed to teach a lesson, much like a parable, could it? Of course, biblical literalists discount contradictory evidence. Their view is cemented, and they have no desire to consider plate tectonics theory which makes more sense.

Simple observations suggest the sun, moon, and stars orbit the Earth. This suggests Earth is the center of the universe, a view held by Medieval authorities, particularly church officials. But several astronomers noticed retrograde of planets’ orbits didn’t fit the geocentric theory. They recognized the inconsistency and dissented. Some paid a heavy price for their challenge — punishment even up to execution.

I have examples of my own.

One came as a response to a column I column I wrote regarding Jan. 6. The reader objected to characterizations I had made concerning the insurrection and altercations inflicted by Capitol invaders.

“I had friends at the Capitol that day. They say it wasn’t at all like the media described,” he wrote. “It was peaceful.”

I directed him to watch the video taken that day and explain how he could characterize the events as peaceful. He replied, “Video can easily be doctored.”

“Are you claiming a dozen major news organizations altered and falsely reported those events?”

“You can’t trust mainstream media,” he countered.

I sighed and realized no amount of evidence would sway him. He believed what he wanted to believe.

How many of us reject logic, science, reason and evidence? How often do we do so? Are we so chained, by choice, to our beliefs that we cannot free ourselves?

I believe the five-ball exercise should be mandatory not only for every middle school student, but also for every office holder. Politicians probably still won’t internalize the lesson, but some teenagers might.

— Community Columnist Ray Buursma is a resident of Holland. Contact him at writetoraybuursma@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Ray Buursma: Life lessons from science