Up & Coming Geoscientists - a sample of our AIG Honours Bursary Recipients

“
Could geologists be
this biased?” I wondered.
This claim bothered me for years, so I set
up an experiment to test this hypothesis. I
want to share the experiment with you in this
post, as well as its outcome and implications,
because the result of this simple experiment
unexpectedly shaped my career direction
in the mining industry. It might shift your
perspective as well.
Figure 1.
Non-geologists who
choose between
synform or antiform
produce results similar
to the computer
results (Figure 2).
The Fold Experiment - Geologists Bias
The Fold Experiment
Eight years later I was in Perth working
as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the
University of Western Australia (UWA) and I
decided to test this hypothesis. I devised a
simple experiment, but first let me explain
what I was testing.
If you ask someone to choose between
black or white, there’s a 0.5 probability for
Figure 2.
each of black or white to be selected. If you
repeat this experiment many times by asking
a population of people, approximately 50%
will choose white, and the other 50%, black.
This is a binary choice experiment, and the
outcome is very predictable.
With the fold experiment, instead of a
choice between black or white, the choice
is based on a geological choice, and the
question is:
“Imagine a single fold profile. Do you see a
synform or an antiform?”
The choice between an antiform and a
synform each has a 0.5 probability, so it’s
identical to a choice between black or white.
If you get a computer to randomly select
between a synform and an antiform and do
this experiment many times, the probability
curve of the antiform bias would look like
Figure 1. The peak of the bell curve sits right
in between the synform and antiform options.
The results in Figure 2 are based on a
random survey of 32 people I conducted on
UWA arts and commerce students who had
no prior exposure to geology. I just walked
up to a student at the UWA campus and my
first screening question was “Do you know
anything about geology?” If a student hadn’t
studied geology or wasn’t exposed in any
way to geology, then they became part of the
control group.
The students had to complete the activity
sheet shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4 shows a
completed example.
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Ian Glacken – Director of Geology
BSc (Hons), MSc (Min. Geol), MSc (Geostatistics),
FAusIMM(CP), CEng, FAIG
iglacken@optiro.com
Level 1, 16 Ord St, West Perth 6005
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AIG NEWS Issue 123 · February 2016 43