How Science Works - Mars Edition

I really love science. Real science. Where people are looking to find an answer to a problem or explain an event they are seeing rather than support a pre-ordained political, theological or economic ideology. For example, we take picture of Mars and we see this:


And many people project their religious/cranky beliefs onto a blurry, low-resolution image. Some say it's the face of Christ, or God or aliens. Even though it's a classic case of pareidolia, which:

...describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hidden messages on records played in reverse.

So we go from God's face, or whom or what ever, to just some mountains on a plateau:


Well, in the NY Times we have a classic scientific dilemma, with competing theories for this geological phenomena regarding some clear run-off terracing:

Research Explains Formation of Unique Martian Fans

To figure out an odd landscape feature on Mars, play in a big sandbox.

Enlist some high school students, too.

That’s what some scientists at the Utrecht University in the Netherlands did, and they believe they now know how sediment deposits spilling out of the mouth of some water channels on Mars were shaped in a series of terraces that look like terraced rice paddies.

...

Some scientists suggested the terraced fans were the result of repeated shore erosion as a lake in the basin dried up. Others thought repeated landslides might have formed the steps.

The sandbox experiment, reported in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, supports a third notion. The terraces form by the interaction of the sediment flow with the water’s edge, which is rising as the basin fills.

And, free of artifacts, delusions and agendas we get to see how the "marketplace of ideas" works in science. A clear, pure example of competing theories over a rather pedestrian phenomenon lacking any social significance and thus, uncorrupted by an agenda; doesn't end up suffering from being deliberately corrupted with "tobacco science" denialism.

Instead, competing theories, free of special interest money and agendas, working toward understanding how the universe works with the best theory having the most explanatory power. Maybe this theory wins. It's got powerful support due to the support of the experimental evidence. Maybe a better theory comes along and wins the day.

Because that's how real, uncorrupted, science works.