| Defining Success |
12 January 2004
|
No Vikings in Ms. Garry's Garden
Archaeologists in Fife, Scotland, got a mild jolt of ridicule from the media last week when a possible Viking site in their neck of the woods turned out to be a 1940s sunken patio. While they were clearly disappointed, the story the media missed is how the scientific method works. This particular incident was an astounding success, not a failure.
According to Reuters, the fun began when a Scottish lady by the name of Marion Garry came across an very smooth arrangement of stones a few feet under her garden ("yard" to American readers). Scottish archaeologist Douglas Speirs, regional archaeologist for Fife (yes, there is such an office) came to investigate, and given the local history, his initial impression was that Vikings had been in Ms. Garry's garden some centuries earlier. "We thought we'd hit the jackpot," he told Reuters.
When they had fully excavated Ms. Garry's garden and analyzed the materials (including a 60-year-old baby's pacifier), they concluded that what they had found was a 1940s sunken patio. Ms. Garry said, "It looks quite messy now but I think it will look very pretty with flowers and plants growing around it during the summer." Mr. Speirs, who is working on his PhD in the field part-time and whose career would certainly have benefited from a genuine find, took a grimmer view, "After all our efforts, you can imagine how silly we feel."
He shouldn't feel silly at all. A man of science, he uncovered evidence, created a hypothesis, gathered more evidence, and disproved the hypothesis. Not all investigation results in the findings the researcher wants. They always result in a contribution to humanity's understanding of the Truth, if done honestly. Either the facts support the hypothesis or they don't. In this case, they don't.
The Vikings were an interesting pagan people of northwestern Europe about whom not enough is known. Mr. Speirs added to that knowledge by proving that, wherever else they might have been in Fife, they weren't in Ms. Garry's garden. A less honest man might have cooked the data and permitted misinformation to circulate, undermining the modern knowledge of the Viking culture. It isn't his fault that there were no Vikings in the 1940s to lay the patio out.
[Editor's Note: Mr. Speirs may wish to examine certain patios created in Minnesota after 1960, when the NFL established in that state a franchise named the Vikings. Few such patios were made by the Vikings themselves, but their fans undoubtedly built a few.]
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