Good morning everyone. It is Monday, January 19th. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this is Hello from the Van. Parents, today's episode is about 10 minutes long. Plan accordingly. Oh, and also we have our first podcast sponsor. Today's podcast is brought to us by the Proper Mountain Woman Club, a delightfully oddball society for those who like earning merit badges, even as adults. It's a place for women who crave adventure and learning. Check them out at propermountainwoman.com or at Proper Mountain Woman Club on Instagram. And with that, let's get into it. We are going to start today's episode out with a game. It's going to be called Guess That Sound.

Woo!

Here's how it's gonna work. I'm going to make a sound here in my office. You guys are going to then try to guess what that sound is. Are we ready? In three, two, one, guess that sound. Did you make a guess? Okay, I'm gonna do it one more time. Now here's what you're gonna do. You've got your guesses. You've made an observation. If you're in your house, you're going to try and replicate that sound safely. And if you need the help of a parent, have a parent help you. But I'm going to give you 30 seconds to try and replicate that sound. Go.

Do do do do do do do. Break it down. Ten seconds. Do no no do. But um bump bump bum bum bum bum.

How did you do? Did you find a way to replicate the sound? Well, now we're going to test your guess. So you have a guess, you've done some research, and we are going to test it against our other example. This is called experimenting. You ready to experiment with sound? So what's gonna happen is I'm going to do the sound again and you try and do your sound at the same time and see if they sound the same. We're basically we're testing that guess. We're testing your hypothesis. I'll do this in my office, you do it there. Are we ready? Three, two, one, go. Does yours sound the same as mine? Now we're gonna draw some conclusions. I'm going to tell you what the mystery sound is, and you are going to then draw conclusions. The mystery sound is a pair of scissors. That's right. Kids say scissors that my children use for school, sitting here in my office. Why would we take the time to do such a silly game? Why would I have you do things like answer a question, do some research, look around your room, form a guess as to what you think it is, then do some more experimenting and try and replicate the sound yourself. Why would I have you do that? Well, I'm gonna tell you, today we are going to be talking about the scientific method. And we just did the entire scientific method together. The scientific method has been around in one form or another for over 3,000 years. There are papyrus writings that go all the way back to 1600 BCE. And these writings talk about the empirical method or what we call the scientific method. And what it is, is it is just a way for scientists or artists or any type of learner to gather information. It technically has six parts, but I'm gonna turn it into five just for ease of memory. The first thing you do is you start with a question. Today's question was what is that sound? The next thing you do is you guess, you make an educated guess. In science, we call this a hypothesis. So you have a question, you make an informed guess, called a hypothesis, then you act on it. I had you go around your house or in your car and try and find a way to replicate that sound. When you act, it's called experimenting. That's what we do. We do tests and we try and figure things out as scientists. So question, guess, that's called a hypothesis, then we act. And a lot of the time as a scientist, when you act, you also have to write things down. If you didn't write it down, it doesn't exist in science. You have to write it down. I didn't have you guys do that, but that's part of act. So question, guess, act, then analyze. How did we analyze? Well, I played my sound at the same time you did the sound on your end. And that was a way to analyze or decide if they were the same or different. Then the last thing that scientists do is they report on their finding. All five parts of the scientific method. Question, guess. This is called a hypothesis, act, analyze, and report. Let's say the five steps of the scientific method together. Ready? Question, guess, act, analyze, and report. Why is the scientific method or this way of learning so important? And why have scientists been using it for so many years? 3,000 years is a long time. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the answer isn't very straightforward. Science is, well, it can be messy sometimes. And learning can be messy sometimes. All great discoveries take time and effort. And scientists discovered that that effort was easier when you had a guideline for gaining information. It's kind of like you know how cars on the road have rules and standards that they have to obey? Like if there's a red light, everyone knows you need to stop. And if there's a green light, you go. That's what the scientific method is for learning. It gives you guidelines, basic rules to be able to gain information and to gain new knowledge. Let me give you an example of what I mean from my own lifetime. When I was a kid, my grandma suffered from stomach ulcers terribly. She would basically get stomach pains that were so bad that she could barely move, and she would get sick and then she'd get sores in her mouth, and she went to doctor after doctor after doctor, and every single doctor told her the same thing. It's just ulcers. The only way to take care of this is stress. You need to not be so stressed. This is mind over matter, lady. You just need to not be so stressed all the time. And you know what my grandma said? Well, that's not it. That's what she said. And then she would say, If I live long enough, this too shall pass. Well, guess what? It didn't pass until much later in her life. And you want to know why? Scientific discovery. You see, in the 80s and 90s, there was an Australian doctor, and he was a young doctor, and he was working in a hospital in Perth. And he talked to one of the doctors there and he said, Hey, where should I put my time and my energy as a doctor? Now, this other doctor said, I've noticed that when I do procedures on some of my patients with stomach ulcers, they all have the same bacteria. And I think this curved bacteria, it might be connected to these ulcers. Keep in mind, the standard belief was that ulcers came from stress. Now this young doctor said, wait a second, I'm gonna figure this out. Remember how I said that science can be messy and that learning and the scientific method can take a long time? This doctor spent 14 years proving his theory. Saying that peptic ulcers came from a bacteria and not from stress, as had been believed for hundreds of years, was a bit of a stretch. How did he prove this? He used himself as the test subject. You see, in science, you can't just experiment on people without their knowledge. It's called informed consent, and people kind of need to know when you're running tests on them. Now, the problem that this doctor, his name was Barry Marshall. The problem that Barry Marshall had was that this bacteria called H. pylori doesn't act the same in animals or in petri dishes as it does inside human beings. And he couldn't get approval for experiments on humans. So he said, fine, I'll do it myself and I'm using myself as the experiment. And he did. Over the course of several weeks and with the help of another doctor, J. Robin Warren, Marshall was able to infect himself with H. pylori by drinking a concoction of the bacteria, giving himself stomach ulsters, testing those ulsters for an overgrowth of the bacteria, and then treating himself with antibiotics. He made himself sick only to fix himself to prove his theory. Dr. Barry Marshall would then go on to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2005 with his partner, J. Robin Warren. Marshall's research has become the foundation for stomach cancer research. From his discoveries, we now know that 90% of gastric cancers are due to an overabundance of H. pylori. And if you were my grandma in the 80s and 90s, this is a big deal. It wasn't all in her head. It wasn't the stress. It was a bacteria overgrown in her stomach. So why are we discussing this in a podcast? We've talked about fun things and serious things before, but why this? And why now? Well, because I think it's important. A lot of the time, how we gain information is how we use information. And it's important to ask questions. Don't be afraid of not knowing the answer just yet. But remember, the scientific method works just as well in science as it does in other areas of your life. Like Doctors Marshall and Warren, don't be afraid to follow your gut. To follow that intuition that says, wait a second, I think we're doing this wrong. Maybe there's a better way. Maybe there's something we're missing. And with that, we're back at the beginning. With simple questions like what's that sound? Or big questions like, Why does grandma's stomach hurt all the time? And we end up with Nobel Prizes and great growing minds. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this has been Hello from the Van. Did you love playing Guess That Sound and implementing the Scientific Method? Well, good news. This week we have a surprising bonus episode. In the bonus episode, we will put the theory of the scientific method into practice as we play several more rounds of Guess That Sound and experiment to find it together. So once you're done here, head on over to that bonus episode. See you there! And now to cite our sources. The first is the Mayo Clinic Proceedings article entitled Barry James Marshall: Discovery of H. pylori as a cause of peptic ulcers, written by R. Kyle, D. Steensma, and Mark Champo, published in May of 2016. Peter Akenstein's General Introduction to Science Rules: A Historical Introduction to Scientific Methods by John Hopkins University Press, published in 2004. The Development of Empirical Research by G. Lloyd, The Cradle of Mathematics is in Egypt, Metaphysics by Olaf Peterson, published in 1993 by Cambridge University Press, and finally, Population Based H. Pylori Screen and Treat Strategies for Gastric Cancer Prevention Guidance on Implementation for Doctors by Eileen Morgan, Gary Clifford, and Yin Yong Park, published in 2025 by the National Library of Medicine, the National Center for Biotechnology Information.