Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alison I don't know if, the science editor
Speaker 1: at how staff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science writerer at how stuff works dot com. And this
Speaker 1: is part two of a two parter. Last episode, um
Speaker 1: thing called science. We talked about what science is in
Speaker 1: very sort of broad general terms, um, you know, defining
Speaker 1: this thing called science and what it, what it means,
Speaker 1: how it works, and uh, and how it's changed what
Speaker 1: we are as a species and civilization. Yeah, we've gotten
Speaker 1: a couple of requests for doing a podcast on the
Speaker 1: scientific method, and we will be tackling some of these
Speaker 1: big topics. And it really was important to us to
Speaker 1: talk about the scientific method, as it is a core
Speaker 1: concept of all science. Yeah, like scientific method as um,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned the Life podcast, it's basically how science advances,
Speaker 1: how it moves, how it claims new territory like a
Speaker 1: like an advancing army. You know, how it you know
Speaker 1: how it's a quote you know, Carl Sagan, how it
Speaker 1: you know, brings light into a demon haunted world. You know. So,
Speaker 1: so what's the history on scientific method. Right when did
Speaker 1: it come out? Come about? It looks like it came
Speaker 1: out as far back as the fourth century. See though
Speaker 1: they didn't call it scientific method, and it's it can't
Speaker 1: really be attributed to like one person, but but some
Speaker 1: of the like the ideas involved, and it started emerging
Speaker 1: pretty early on. Yeah, you got a guy you guys
Speaker 1: might have heard of him in Aristotle. He proposed methods
Speaker 1: to answer questions about the world through rigorous observation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was way back in the fourth century BC. Much later,
Speaker 1: Albertus Magnus comes along and he borrowed some principles from
Speaker 1: Muslim scientists, and he described this repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation,
Speaker 1: and verification. Do you know that Albertus Magnus suppose as
Speaker 1: we had an android? I'm sorry what and android? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like look it up. It's pretty crazy, like it
Speaker 1: was probably not an actual robot, just to go ahead
Speaker 1: and get that out there. But um, but he had
Speaker 1: like some sort if I remember the scry he hit
Speaker 1: some sort of like mannequin that maybe had some sort
Speaker 1: of mechanical I think those those charges may have been
Speaker 1: because a lot of these older guys like our next guy,
Speaker 1: Francis Bacon included. You know, they were curious about a
Speaker 1: lot of things, and sometimes that curiosity took them into,
Speaker 1: you know, exploring um less scientific and more magical ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, because that was, like I said, you didn't
Speaker 1: have as clearly to find a science back then, so
Speaker 1: it would sort of bleed into other areas. Um. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, he supposedly had an android, Francis Bacon. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think he did. But and he's important we
Speaker 1: bring him up because he was really the first to
Speaker 1: formalize the concept of a true scientific method. And he,
Speaker 1: of course, as standing on the shoulders of giants, as
Speaker 1: these scientists tend to you, was basing is method on
Speaker 1: the work of Nicolas Caperncus and Galileo. Yeah, then along
Speaker 1: comes Mr Newton, Sir Newton to us and his laws
Speaker 1: really ruled the world of science for centuries, and he
Speaker 1: marked the beaming of the scientific age. And don't we
Speaker 1: have a we have a really good article on Isaac
Speaker 1: Newton on the side, don't we do? And I have
Speaker 1: an outstanding request to do a blog post on oh yes,
Speaker 1: about his um, his involvement in alchemy and I remember else.
Speaker 1: I know it's arianism, Okay, Newton and arianism, So I
Speaker 1: will get to that at some point, I promise. Cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Newton, though, was pretty much the the beginning
Speaker 1: of the the you know, our scientific age. And you
Speaker 1: know he brought about the beginning methods to um an
Speaker 1: attempt to minimize the influence of bias and prejudice in
Speaker 1: the experiment or and and and the scientific method also
Speaker 1: provides an objective, standardized approach to conducting experiments. And it's
Speaker 1: also about getting cred right, you know, it's good, but
Speaker 1: it's about getting cred not only with other scientists, but
Speaker 1: with the public, with you know, the people who are
Speaker 1: going to be um, exposed to your work. And how
Speaker 1: do they know, um, that you're conducting your work in
Speaker 1: a controlled and rigorous fashion. Yeah, and you made a
Speaker 1: good point when we were preparing for this about nobody's
Speaker 1: perfect when it comes to experimentation in carrying out the
Speaker 1: scientific method, Like there's no like we've named some pretty
Speaker 1: you know, stellar names, you know, um, you know, be
Speaker 1: at Aristotle or Galileo or Newton, but nobody's like free
Speaker 1: of criticism, you know, even like modern dudes like like hawking.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like people. People will and do take
Speaker 1: hawking to task the things that they think doesn't hold
Speaker 1: up to scientific scrutiny. And that's that's how science works.
Speaker 1: Like nothing is set in stone, right, So you have
Speaker 1: to be open to colleagues, um, feedback, constructive criticism, although
Speaker 1: sometimes it can get a little gnarly. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: you can have some like the bone war. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that when we're talking about dinosaurs. These respected scholars, paleontologists,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they're battling over dinosaur bones.
Speaker 1: And I published first. Now you published first, and never
Speaker 1: having been in in a career where I need to
Speaker 1: publish to get ahead, I imagine it does get very
Speaker 1: heated and the pressure is on to publish, to get funding,
Speaker 1: all the stuff, to be the one who's in Nature
Speaker 1: first or whatever publication. But getting back to your point,
Speaker 1: Highlights was a good managing. They had the page where
Speaker 1: you would find the hidden objects in the I did.
Speaker 1: I used to read that in the doctor's office. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, beginning back to your point, there are two
Speaker 1: major forms of bias that creep into experiments and we
Speaker 1: should mention them. Uh, selection bias and that's really that
Speaker 1: occurs if the participants you select, for example, UM for
Speaker 1: an experiment aren't representative of particular population, so selection bias.
Speaker 1: Say you're interested in whether people watch more TV at night,
Speaker 1: but you only go to a house. Uh, you only
Speaker 1: go to a neighborhood that's fifty five and older. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not a good like cross section of the population
Speaker 1: you're looking to to study. Yeah, because maybe you're looking
Speaker 1: to look at TV habit TV watching habits in population
Speaker 1: from thirty and above, right, So you're if you're only
Speaker 1: hitting the fifty five and older community, probably not going
Speaker 1: to get that creative results. I'm not going to have
Speaker 1: an informed, informed data. So you also can have observer bias.
Speaker 1: An example of this may be that a participant in
Speaker 1: experiment couldn't remember correctly what his exposure to particular variable was.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're interested in the question of UM
Speaker 1: influenza among UM a particular population of people, and UM,
Speaker 1: your participant can't remember the number of times he hung
Speaker 1: out with runny nose nursery school kids. However, you choose
Speaker 1: to word that in your experiment, Well cool, let's UM.
Speaker 1: So those are two examples of us cool. Well, let's so,
Speaker 1: I guess it's time to actually begin the process, begin
Speaker 1: the scientific method. Let's do it right. So the first
Speaker 1: step is pretty pretty basic, doesn't require a lot of explanation.
Speaker 1: Make an observation, and you know, I think, well, you
Speaker 1: encounter this every day. You like, maybe you're on Marty
Speaker 1: or something that Marty's our public transportation train system here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, and you you look across the island and
Speaker 1: you go, I wonder, like, what why that lady is
Speaker 1: eating an entyrotistrie chicken on the train. It's an observation
Speaker 1: and it raises question, chicken lady, it was weird, it
Speaker 1: was It's kind of gross. That would be definitely gross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now that would would be harder to that more scientific
Speaker 1: would be like you know, like Charles Darwin observing uh,
Speaker 1: you know, different species of finches uh on the galactical
Speaker 1: silence and and asking himself, you know, what's going on here? Why?
Speaker 1: Why all the similarity? You know, or you know, the
Speaker 1: things of that nature are definitely more in the scientific realm.
Speaker 1: Why is something the way it is? And And that's
Speaker 1: that's the beginning. Okay, But let's just get back to
Speaker 1: the richistory. Chicken. There's no reason why you couldn't um
Speaker 1: come up with some sort of interesting experiment based around that. Okay,
Speaker 1: well okay, yeah, Like the in the situation would be
Speaker 1: like why does this lady find it necessary to eat
Speaker 1: a roctistory chicken with their fingers on the train and
Speaker 1: then touch the pole? There's there's all sorts of interesting
Speaker 1: stuff to be explored there. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: about finches or about you know, particle accelerators. The very
Speaker 1: questions that you know surround us in our normal lives,
Speaker 1: I think are worthy of investigation, and I think it's
Speaker 1: just really worth emphasizing because science does not have to
Speaker 1: be about these um super unapproachable intellectual topics, right like
Speaker 1: the the Ignoble Prizes, the Improbable Research publication they constantly
Speaker 1: cover peer reviewed scientific um, you know, papers that deal
Speaker 1: with kind of ludicrous founding, you know, questions, But but
Speaker 1: nothing's you know, like you say, nothing is really out
Speaker 1: of bounds for science, you knows, of like, what was
Speaker 1: one of the more ridiculous ones that I can actually
Speaker 1: mention in the podcast because the only ones coming to
Speaker 1: mind are the probably risque ones. Um, I think there
Speaker 1: was something that's um, there was a charcoal filter. A
Speaker 1: man who invented a charcoal filter so that when he
Speaker 1: um was feeling gaseous, there was That wasn't really an experiment,
Speaker 1: that was more of an invention, I suppose. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's the only one I can do. But still the
Speaker 1: things of that nature. I mean, there are some scientific
Speaker 1: experiments I know for a fact, like dealing with NASA
Speaker 1: that have to do with like how ghassy people are,
Speaker 1: because that's an issue if you're going into space, so
Speaker 1: bad breath. So yeah, just about anything, no matter how
Speaker 1: ridiculous or seemingly insignificant. Uh, science can and often does
Speaker 1: analyze it. So we have a pretty insignificant sounding example,
Speaker 1: just a very hypothetical situation here around the office, right
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, So Robert and I put together a
Speaker 1: little hype local experiment and here's our experiment. We were
Speaker 1: going to make an observation. And here's the deal. Robert, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are a big fan of pudding pops and for
Speaker 1: the purposes, so you're gonna be bringing a stash of
Speaker 1: putting pops to work. You're gonna put them in the freezer,
Speaker 1: don't put them in the fridge like I put my
Speaker 1: ice cream cake for my sixteenth birthday in the fridge
Speaker 1: and it melted, and that was why do you bring
Speaker 1: that to work? Now? It probably just as well you
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat baconized turning sixty. Um, So, anyway, you've been
Speaker 1: bringing these pudding pops to work. He's stash him in
Speaker 1: the freezer. Two clock rolls around. You're really getting that,
Speaker 1: you know, urge for a pudding pop, which I guess
Speaker 1: grips some of us. Yeah, two pm, that's a good
Speaker 1: time for it. Sugar, you need some sugar to keep going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you even noticing that the pudding pops are disappearing.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. They're disappearing faster than you've been eating them.
Speaker 1: At least this is your thought. It's not like you're
Speaker 1: the kind of guy who you know, marks his food
Speaker 1: and the freezer and ticks one off when you take
Speaker 1: one out of the box. So you've you've kind of observed. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've observed. And this leads right into the next step
Speaker 1: in the scientific method, and that is ask a question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta narrow our focus of inquiry. We've gotta identify
Speaker 1: the problem. We're gonna get specific, right, So the observation
Speaker 1: we made was that something is happening to these pudding pops.
Speaker 1: They're vanishing. Am I the only one thinking of Bill
Speaker 1: Cosby right now? Probably not um? And then the question
Speaker 1: that immediately arises is, Hey, what's happening to these pudding pops?
Speaker 1: Is someone throwing them away? Are they like they are
Speaker 1: they atomizing and just you know, or they've slipping into
Speaker 1: another dimension. And maybe the boxes upside down and they're
Speaker 1: they're falling out of the boxing on the way to work,
Speaker 1: and then I'm putting an empty box into the freezer. See,
Speaker 1: these are all these are all interesting possible Maybe just
Speaker 1: maybe somebody is eating your pudding pops and it's not you.
Speaker 1: Well that leads to step three right, form a hypothesis.
Speaker 1: So there are all these possibilities. Now that the possibility
Speaker 1: that a a like a tiny black hole is opening
Speaker 1: up in the house, stuff works, freezer and consuming pudding pops, well,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's very likely. Just it's maybe it's possible,
Speaker 1: but it's extremely unlikely. Likewise, I feel like I'm pretty
Speaker 1: aware of my you know, surroundings. When I'm bringing things
Speaker 1: to work. They're probably not following out falling out of
Speaker 1: that box. So I'm going to go with the hypothesis
Speaker 1: somebody's stealing my pudding pops. Well, if they're vanilla flavor,
Speaker 1: nobody's stealing them chocolate, I might grant you that. So
Speaker 1: um right, So no, now we have this question, and
Speaker 1: let's let's formulate it correctly so that we can find
Speaker 1: an answer. And that's really the next step that we
Speaker 1: have going on here. We're going to suggest a possible
Speaker 1: answer in the form of a hypothesis. And a hypothesis
Speaker 1: is often defined as an educated guess because we sort
Speaker 1: of have this idea that, yes, maybe somebody is taking
Speaker 1: the pudding pops black holes not really not really likely.
Speaker 1: Some of the other options not so likely, So this
Speaker 1: is somewhat of an informed guess. It's generally in the
Speaker 1: form of like X then y R. Another important thing
Speaker 1: about the hypothesis is that you're gonna have to define
Speaker 1: all the terms in there, right, So um, if our
Speaker 1: hypothesis is um, let's see if we leave a box
Speaker 1: putting pops in the fridge for a week, then Josh
Speaker 1: Clark from Stuff you Should Know, We'll still a pudding
Speaker 1: pop a day in the afternoon. Accepting weekends, Okay, So
Speaker 1: what are we gonna have to define there? Who is
Speaker 1: Josh Clark? What is it? Pudding pop um? What is stealing? Indeed,
Speaker 1: a couple of different things that we're going to have
Speaker 1: to know and be able to measure to see in
Speaker 1: fact whether our hypothesis has proven true. And how are
Speaker 1: we going to find out if it's proven true. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have to devise an experiment. Okay, and this is
Speaker 1: step four, Step four duct an experiment the excitement. So
Speaker 1: the hypothesis is that Josh Clark may be stealing these
Speaker 1: putting pop a day and said, just to clarify, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure Josh Clark is a fan of frozen yogurt
Speaker 1: and not putting pops but in real life, but for
Speaker 1: the purposes the experiment, he's a putting pop faint. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's connect our experiment. Let's make it scientific.
Speaker 1: All right? Well, how do you can connect the scientific experiment? Like?
Speaker 1: What are the well, I mean a lot of people listening.
Speaker 1: You are going to think of something that takes place
Speaker 1: in the lab. You know you're gonna invoke buns and
Speaker 1: burners and lab work benches and test tubes and all
Speaker 1: sorts of things like that earln Meyer, Flaska. Do you
Speaker 1: remember this? Yeah, I think so. But it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean like, it doesn't necessarily mean like me and Alison
Speaker 1: going into the laboratory and like melting down putting pops
Speaker 1: and like you know that kind of stuff. No, our
Speaker 1: experiment can be pretty simple, and and some really great
Speaker 1: experiments in science have been extraordinarily simple. Yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: about like not that we would put our experiment on
Speaker 1: the level of this, but it's all about like keeping
Speaker 1: it on task and in avoiding bias, so like in
Speaker 1: controlling for your variables as much as you can um
Speaker 1: and then you know, if you can't control for some
Speaker 1: of these variables and analyzing the data uh later in
Speaker 1: a way that can say maybe you run like linear regression.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I just pull that up stats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you wouldn't want to, like, you're not conducting an
Speaker 1: experiment to prove Josh Clark is is stealing putting pops.
Speaker 1: You're testing a hypothesis. It's it's it may seem like
Speaker 1: a slight thing, but it's it really makes a lot
Speaker 1: of difference. You're you're you're supposed to avoid having any
Speaker 1: kind of like preconceived answer, you know. I mean you
Speaker 1: can have you can sort of have one, but not
Speaker 1: like officially. You know, you can have an informed guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have expected result, but not you know, you're
Speaker 1: not setting out to prove that result exactly. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's roll our experiment. What are we gonna do.
Speaker 1: We gotta get some pops, right, Um, So let's say
Speaker 1: we were going to conduct our experiment over the span
Speaker 1: of a work week Monday through Friday. We're gonna put
Speaker 1: the pops in the freezer at the start of Monday morning,
Speaker 1: and we're going to add a hidden camera. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know where to get one of these if we
Speaker 1: were to conduct such an experiment. I guess they're probably
Speaker 1: pretty easy to yet. They probably have them in the
Speaker 1: video department, yeah, everywhere. Yeah. So we're gonna hook up
Speaker 1: the hidden camera, and then we're going to monitor the
Speaker 1: camera and see what happens with the pops, who's taken them.
Speaker 1: When we're gonna record the data, We're gonna record you
Speaker 1: eating the pops. We're gonna record everything about the pops. Now,
Speaker 1: we're also going to need a control group, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I suppose we could we could have the control group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like when if you're testing a drug on people,
Speaker 1: like in a clinical trial, like the test group would
Speaker 1: receive a placebo or they would they would not receive
Speaker 1: the proposed they proposed therapy, because you want to see
Speaker 1: how people respond just normally. I do think we need
Speaker 1: to do a podcast on the placebo effect, by the way,
Speaker 1: I want to do one. Okay, so we're gonna also
Speaker 1: place a box of pudding pops in the freeze by
Speaker 1: the dev team, and that should be interesting because they
Speaker 1: are a wacky bunch, yeah, and they're far away, you know,
Speaker 1: like for the purposes of this experiment, Josh Clark never
Speaker 1: goes there. And also for the purposes of this experiment,
Speaker 1: the development team does not like putting their all allergic
Speaker 1: to it. Okay, all right, all right, so they're a
Speaker 1: good control group. Alright. So so yeah, we so we
Speaker 1: carry out this experiment, right, Yeah, what do we find?
Speaker 1: Get some data? Well, that's the thing. We have to
Speaker 1: move on to step five, which is analyzed the data conclusion. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: did do a little deduction deduction deducon So, for instance,
Speaker 1: let's let's say that we look at the data and
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like Josh's stealing these. It doesn't well,
Speaker 1: let's say like Josh. Let's say that in the in
Speaker 1: this particular footage, like Josh is only showing up at
Speaker 1: in the at the freezer like like once a week,
Speaker 1: and we're still having one a day disappear. So it's
Speaker 1: not Josh. Yeah, so we would have to at this
Speaker 1: point reject the hypothesis. Yes, and then we would have
Speaker 1: to go backwards a few steps to the form of
Speaker 1: hypothesis level, and we have to form a new one.
Speaker 1: Maybe look into that black hole thing or maybe look
Speaker 1: into the girls from I don't know, Stephane ms in
Speaker 1: history class, right, Yeah, maybe they have a thing for
Speaker 1: putting bops. Never know. And uh. And likewise, if we
Speaker 1: were to look at the data and find proof that
Speaker 1: Josh was actually stealing these, then we would have to
Speaker 1: accept the hypothesis would be validated and it would be
Speaker 1: nice and then maybe you know, submit it to Highlights
Speaker 1: magazine for republication. Well, yes, of course you bring up
Speaker 1: a good point. So after we're after we're done analyzing
Speaker 1: the data and we've drawn conclusions and um, gone through
Speaker 1: all the accepting or rejecting of the hypothesis. I'm not
Speaker 1: even gonna get into the little hypothesis. Well, we're keeping
Speaker 1: it pretty simple for for everybody here, right, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna want to We're gonna want to communicate the results
Speaker 1: of our experiment with our colleagues, with our fellow putting
Speaker 1: pop scientists out there. We're gonna, you know, want to see, Hey,
Speaker 1: what did you guys think about how we conducted our experiment.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll get maybe little submitted to highlights. So we
Speaker 1: have to we have to go through peer review, and
Speaker 1: one of the people who is a putting pop expert
Speaker 1: will say, hey, you know what, actually I've done this
Speaker 1: experiment and you forgot to do X y Z. You
Speaker 1: didn't stick the camera in the right place because yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or yeah. There are a number of problems that can
Speaker 1: come and they come up constantly, like if you actually
Speaker 1: look at any like peer reviewed publication, like it's constantly
Speaker 1: like you know, people bringing up problems and just really
Speaker 1: tearing into studies that they don't agree with, their find
Speaker 1: fault with their disagree with the methods. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: are limitations to to science. It can't achieve everything, and
Speaker 1: clearly the scientific method is a powerful tool. Um, but
Speaker 1: it too has its limitations. For starters, a hypothesis has
Speaker 1: to be testable and uh and falsifiable, and the experiments
Speaker 1: and observations have to be repeatable. Yeah, so yeah, you
Speaker 1: you can't do it like have an experiment. They can
Speaker 1: only be done once. You can't do science in a vacuum, right,
Speaker 1: um you well, I guess you could do science in
Speaker 1: a vacuum, but that's you guys know what I meant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has to be testable, like you can't be
Speaker 1: you know, nobody can have like a scientific experiment for
Speaker 1: is there a God? Because that's just that's not testable.
Speaker 1: It's it's not something that is you know, that's scientifically
Speaker 1: provable or disprovable. Well, I can't believe we went from
Speaker 1: putting pops to God and like the span of five minutes. Well,
Speaker 1: someone say the distance is not that far, you know,
Speaker 1: especially fans of pudding pops. I guess yeah. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you have instances where scientific principles are used to try
Speaker 1: to lend credibility to certain non scientific ideas. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: let's say, for instance, I were to have the bones
Speaker 1: of some like you know older you know, hominid that
Speaker 1: may have you know, evolved and do a human and
Speaker 1: I tried to make the case that this is an
Speaker 1: alien skeleton, you know, and you know, and I like
Speaker 1: sort of applied some sort of pseudo scientific ideas. You know,
Speaker 1: people do this all the time where you kind of
Speaker 1: like take like a one scoop of science and one
Speaker 1: scoop of crazy and or one scoop of just extreme bias,
Speaker 1: and you know, mix the two and you know, produce
Speaker 1: this cake that a lot of people think is the
Speaker 1: real deal. Which is why everybody should be educated in science.
Speaker 1: Everybody should have the tools to apply their their critical
Speaker 1: thinking skills to a particular uh scientific problem or a
Speaker 1: scientific paper them right, and likewise, I mean, anything in
Speaker 1: science should be uh, I mean it should be just
Speaker 1: fair game for for criticism, provided you know, bring the
Speaker 1: science the science. Science is a tool that continually, you know,
Speaker 1: changes what we believe about the universe, you know, and
Speaker 1: and it's you know, nothing nothing is sacred, you know,
Speaker 1: use the tools of science to question what has come before,
Speaker 1: no doubt, no doubt. That seems like a pretty good
Speaker 1: place to end. So, um, we hope you've enjoyed our
Speaker 1: walk through, uh the scientific method and are putting pop experiment,
Speaker 1: and we hope you buy a big box of putting
Speaker 1: pop right after this, right, and again, the pudding pop
Speaker 1: example is it's pretty simple. It's we're just trying to
Speaker 1: basic structure out there for the scientist. So let's turn
Speaker 1: to something different, a little listener mail. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: some listener mail there for us, I do. Okay, So
Speaker 1: here goes a while back, and maybe you guys will
Speaker 1: remember that we covered oil in a two part series
Speaker 1: about looking for it and then harvesting it from the earth. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: And we put the call out for people who have
Speaker 1: worked on oil rigs to let us know how that was.
Speaker 1: And sure enough we got somebody who responded, Thank you, Adam.
Speaker 1: And Adam sent us a pretty interesting note. So he says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I love the podcast. You did a great job summarizing
Speaker 1: both the addiction and how oil is explored. Slash produced.
Speaker 1: I've worked in the oil industry for a few years
Speaker 1: after graduating as an electrical engineer from Ohiouse State. Go Bucks.
Speaker 1: That's in the email. Okay, you mentioned one of the
Speaker 1: things I used to do on the podcast, controlled explosions
Speaker 1: through the casing to facilitate the flow of oil gas
Speaker 1: into a newly drilled well. He also used to run
Speaker 1: a variety of tools into the well to help oil
Speaker 1: companies produce their wells more efficiently, from checking for plaque
Speaker 1: along the casing that minimizes diameter, to see if one
Speaker 1: zone of production might be producing too much water. So
Speaker 1: all sorts of really interesting stuff around there. And then
Speaker 1: Adam goes on to add oil rigs are not luxurious.
Speaker 1: They have minimal space used as efficiently as possible. I
Speaker 1: was on jack Off riggs in the Middle East, the
Speaker 1: United Arab Emirates and Qatar, so that's my reference point.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's different in other parts of the world. None
Speaker 1: of them many rigs. I worked on how to gym
Speaker 1: if people wanted to exercise, they could walk in circles
Speaker 1: on the heliport. It's true there were quote unquote chefs
Speaker 1: and quote unquote doctors, but they didn't exactly have Culinary
Speaker 1: Institute diplomas or Envy certificates hanging on the walls. Platforms,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, are like a small city and
Speaker 1: these amenities are common. So if you're a work at
Speaker 1: fiend and you're interested in working for oil, I guess
Speaker 1: platforms would be the way to go. I like the
Speaker 1: idea that the doctors had culinary diploma shows not what
Speaker 1: he was saying. So, Adam, ads um, these platforms are
Speaker 1: there for the long haul and they're designed to be livable. Also,
Speaker 1: in most areas of the world, the production is taken
Speaker 1: over by the national oil company. Thus the platform mainly
Speaker 1: houses workers from that country, or at least that country's
Speaker 1: oil company's staff. During the drilling process. The oil company
Speaker 1: represent may represent one the personnel on the rig at
Speaker 1: any given time. He said us a picture of him
Speaker 1: on a rig, and he's a he's behind an exclusive
Speaker 1: sign with a white hard hat. Did you see it? No?
Speaker 1: I didn't. I'll have to pick it up, so he
Speaker 1: writes on I no longer work in the industry, thankfully.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, the pay is excellent and the benefits
Speaker 1: are good, depending on who you work for. The oil
Speaker 1: service companies typically paid better but treated employees worse. I
Speaker 1: took the money I made and did an MBA at
Speaker 1: a top ten business school in Spain. Adam, and we'll
Speaker 1: actually start my first post NBA job next week at
Speaker 1: a wind turbine company in Denmark. Well that's interesting into
Speaker 1: the story. Well, yeah, so he says, this is the close. Yes,
Speaker 1: working in the oil industry fueled my passion to get
Speaker 1: into renew the energy. I think anyone involved in the
Speaker 1: process can see how unsustainable it is. I hope you
Speaker 1: found this martually interesting. We did. We totally did. Thank
Speaker 1: you really, thanks a ton for writing Adam. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: even if it is unsustainable, certainly, And you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of opinions vary about the about the use of
Speaker 1: oil and the oil industry in general. But as we
Speaker 1: mentioned that the actual podcast, the process involved in finding
Speaker 1: the oil and then extracting it, it's just just really
Speaker 1: fascinating because, like we say, if you're when someone is
Speaker 1: addicted to something, they'll go to extraordinary means to get
Speaker 1: what they're addicted to and um, and we go to
Speaker 1: extraordinary means to get that oil. And it's it's really
Speaker 1: amazing because there's some cold, just excellent technology involved in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's excellent minds. So hey, if you guys have any
Speaker 1: thoughts that you want to send us, whether they're about
Speaker 1: oil or the scientific method it um or putting bops,
Speaker 1: do this an email at science Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: dot com or connect with us. We're on Facebook, stuff
Speaker 1: from the Science Lab or Twitter, were Lab stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll constantly update you on what we're podcasting about, blogging about.
Speaker 1: And also just like I looked out dated, which just
Speaker 1: cool science stuff that I find on the web. So
Speaker 1: look us up and thanks for listening, guys, we appreciate it.
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