FIELD GEOLOGY EDUCATION AND MASTERING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Many in the petroleum industry make the very good point that it is a high-tech business. As a geoscientist, I prefer the term “high-science,” since we routinely utilize the scientific method in order to make testable predictions about the subsurface. Thus, the development of scientific skills and thought processes in students is crucial. Field mapping provides an excellent venue to develop such skills and paradigms, and also gives instructors an opportunity to challenge students to reflect on how their own field experiences provide insights into how the scientific method works in organizational settings.

For instance, while the ability to make accurate and repeatable measurements is a basic skill, petroleum geoscientists often rely heavily on measurements provided by others. Thus, students in the field certainly should be taught and required to make accurate measurements, but also to enunciate and share potential issues in others’ measurements based on their own field experiences.

Another example is the formulation, refinement and iterative testing of multiple working hypotheses. While it is challenging for many students to develop this skill in the field, it is even less common to find students who have been encouraged to constructively share their hypotheses with other students. From a petroleum company’s perspective, this inclusive extra step is invaluable since it simultaneously increases both the number and quality of competing hypotheses, which can often make the difference between drilling successful wells and dry holes.

Without the continuous, analog grounding provided by field experience, it is easy to construct unrealistic earth models based on “band-limited” data sets like borehole logs and reflection seismic images. Our discipline is becoming more and more prone to such errors, since about half of incoming Geoscience graduate students are now coming from non-Geoscience backgrounds. Graduate Geoscience programs should strongly encourage these students to participate in significant field experiences.