Used to call bull on the 'pollen analysis' stuff until last summer

I was digging a test pit near a old creek bed in Ohio and hit a layer of dark soil with no artifacts, just some weird yellow clumps. My buddy who studies palynology convinced me to bag a sample and send it to a lab, and it came back showing corn pollen from like 1200 AD which meant there was a field there way before any settlers showed up. Has anyone else had a field lab result totally flip what you thought was happening at a site?

3 comments

3 Comments

stella_scott9618d ago

Doesn't it make you wonder how many things we think we know are actually just based on what we can see on the surface? It's kind of like how people argue about stuff in their everyday lives, you know, like who's the better cook in a family or which route to work is faster, when really the evidence is sitting there waiting to be found if you just dig a little deeper (literally in your case). I've started noticing this with old gardening advice too, like my grandma swore by planting by the moon phases and I always thought it was nonsense, but then someone showed me actual studies on soil moisture levels and germination rates and I had to admit there was some real logic behind it. Your corn pollen thing is a perfect example of that same pattern, where a little bit of scientific evidence can totally rearrange what you assumed was a done deal. It's humbling in a good way I think, keeps you from getting too cocky about what you think you know.

charles83618d ago

Hang on though, I'd push back a little on that. Just because you find a study doesn't mean the old way had real logic. People have been proving stuff with cherry-picked data forever. Your grandma's moon planting could just be confirmation bias, she remembers the years it worked and forgets the years it didn't. The corn pollen thing is its own specific case, not a blanket rule that digging deeper always uncovers truth. Sometimes you dig and find nothing but dirt.

mileslane18d agoMost Upvoted

Solid point - digging deeper can just mean hitting more confirmation bias.