"—and gravity did most of the heavy lifting, which frankly stung," said the lead author of a new federal report, reached at her desk on Tuesday. The report finds that water, when placed at the top of a canyon, moves to the bottom. The finding took nine years.
The timing was hard on everyone. On Saturday a flash flood tore through Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch in Arizona's Grand Canyon. The National Park Service evacuated more than 60 people, and search teams are still working. The working group declined to comment on being scooped.
The methods were careful. Nine buckets of water served as the test group. A tenth bucket was asked to flow uphill, as a control. It declined in every trial. The p-value was small. That is the number that says the result was probably not luck. The sample size was adequate. It was not.
The water went down all nine times. We checked each time. Then we checked the checking.
