Hypothesis + Experiment + Conclusion = Science

[cdave]

1) Hypothesis: You should chew your food thirty times before swallowing.
Experiment:
Split a bottle of sink de-clogger between 4 glasses, and cut a steak into bite sized chunks and split between 4 bags.
i) Empty 1 bag into a glass.
ii) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 10 times before emptying it into a glass.
iii) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 30 times before emptying it into a glass.
vi) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 50 times before emptying it into a glass.
After 4 hours sieve and weigh the remaining solids.
Expected Results:
i) Lots left.
ii) Some left.
iii) Little left.
iv) Not too different from iii)

2) Hypothesis: People can't divine for metal.
Experiment:
Stolen from Dawkins.
Experimenter 1 places a metal object under a small fraction of a number of buckets, records this, and leaves.
Experimenter 2, without meeting Experimenter 1 leads the diviner into the room, and lets them test each bucket with divining sticks, and records the result.
The experimenters results are compared.
Expected results:
The number of buckets whose contents are correctly identified is not significantly higher than would be expected if the selection was at random (this number to be determined before the experiment starts).

[Poll #1486717]

Comments

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

If you ever do the food experiment, just don't do it in front of me. I have a phobia about spit.

[cpt-buggernuts.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! I have the same thing. Does the idea of chewing gum make you want to vomit, too? Because if so I think we need to team up and, um... fight gob?

Yeah. So, there's actually no way in which this information benefits either of us but I got over-excited.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I forget and take a piece of gum that is offered to me and then after half an hour realise I stuff in my mouth and NOWHERE TO GO WITH IT.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Where was the spit in the food experiment?

(er, perhaps that sentence would read better as, where in the food experiment was the spit?)

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Just skim reading it made me gag. Writing this made me gag.

Phobia is not rational.