The ultimate science game is 20 Questions?

So as a game designer who is intensely interested in the scientific process and has studied the psychology of scientific reasoning, I'm interested in making a game to teach science. I don't mean teach facts about a particular field, I mean a game that embodies, represents, and can be used to teach about the process of science. The cycle of observation, interpreting that observation, testing that interpretation with another observation, and so on that we use to understand how the world we live in works. I think that would be super awesome and provide a sorely needed service.

Yes, geeking out about the scientific method and
trying to make it a board game may be even stronger
nerd credentials than previously presented, I suppose

This post isn't about the side project game I'm working on, though. Well, except for context: I was thinking about how to do this, and being the big dreamer I am, my initial impulse was to not just represent the cyclical ongoing process of empirical observation and theory revision, but to have systems in the game to show the interplay of surrounding factors as well. For example,  needing some theories in other domains first (like plate tectonics and hereditary traits for the theory of evolution), how new theories have to address all the evidence for current theories, how past theories accumulated anomalous data until a new theory was more attractive, and so on. So after the initial rush of sketching out these systems, I realized this would be a rather complex game.

Not that I don't enjoy complex games.

That's of course fine for a general boardgame, but if I wanted to communicate these concepts to kids as young as possible (which I do) this is not an optimal approach. What I really needed was more a progression of games/activities. So ideally, something only verbal with no pieces at all to get players thinking in a scientific way, then a core game that was just the scientific process, and then expansions for those other systems that could later be bolted on; so once players were familiar with the core game, depth and some complexity could be added, to provide a richer experience and model of the process. (So as a side note, I'm fiddling with just the core game now.)

But when I tried to think of that initial activity, I realized it already exists; The game I want to start with, thats a verbal game with no pieces required, that has players iterate through this cycle, and that involves some critical thinking to refine an idea and progress. Its called 20 Questions.

Yes, the game that proved that one friend is always thinking about Batman.

Think about the goal of 20 questions and how it works for everyone guessing;
You are trying to determine information about an unknown thing. To do this, you get to conduct a number of tests that tell you limited information about the thing (ie yes or no), and then use the information for all the previous tests to devise the next test. You go on figuring out what questions to ask and using the responses to ask more questions until you know the information you want, and that is just such a nice idealized version of the general scientific process in playable form. It makes me giddy, just thinking about it.

But it gets even better. Think about when you play 20 questions and how it progresses. It always starts with the same, practically formalized questions: "Person, place, or thing", "real or fictional", "larger or smaller than a breadbox", "living or dead". Then some other broad but less used questions, and eventually you are asking questions you have probably never asked in a previous game.

Ok, so a real living person who is sort of famous
from the internet, for youtube videos...
Have they ever done a video in peanutbutter face?

Which is just so appropriate. First you have the big general tests that are used on everything, because they are so general, and these are time-tested...tests that have persisted because they are effective. Then the main categories within those distinctions. The breadbox one strikes me as particularly funny, because its a common question/test based on a reference thats outdated but is still used in this one field as a standard convention. That may be funnier to people in some fields than others (or anyone using the Imperial system over metric).

But as you progress into tests that will be useful for addressing this specific, novel problem, there stop being stock tests. You have to think about similar things you've dealt with before, or generate entirely new questions based on what you think the possibilities are. And that even involves evaluating what the remaining possibilities are and what test would distinguish between them.

Ok, so yes to the peanut butter, but not a vlogbrother.
You faked me out. Hmm...was it for comedic effect or cosmetic?

I mean when I thought about it, I just couldn't come up with a better lightweight activity to express science as a game. Its just so good. A game where the point is literally to discover some piece of information about the world (it may only be what someone else is thinking of and of limited utility, but as a psychologist its still totally worth knowing). And the way you do this is a cycle of test, refine your idea of what the possibilities are, then test again. And sometimes you get a response that makes you completely rethink what those possibilities are.

Cosmetic? geez I am not up to date on my peanut butter facial youtubers...

And you can play cooperatively with others, where you are all trying to think of good questions and collaborating. And its such a general game, it demonstrates how this kind of thinking can be applied across many, many areas. Its just so good.

And as boggled as I am by how well this ubiquitous game presents scientific reasoning, I am at least as boggled by how much less interesting and effective the standard ways of teaching "the scientific method" are. Even more so when I searched for other games on it.

"Look on my gamified quizzes, ye designers, and despair!"

Like a lot of others in science and science communication, I think the science is awesome, in the full, outdated, drop-your-jaw-and-stare meaning of that word. From the impressive feats to the everyday improvements, its just great. And all that progress comes from this empirical, critical process.

I think its a great disservice to reduce that process to something students memorize, regurgitate, and then think of as "something scientists do in a lab", something separated from their own life.

This is something people do all the time, but don't think about as 'scientific' since its not in a lab or a classroom. I think (perhaps naively) that if you get people, especially when they're young, to see science as how we learn about the world, as something they are already doing outside the classroom, and at its core as that process of making sense of the world based on what we've observed of it, then they'll respond better to it. It can become a thing like running or talking or reading,  that everyone does, but some do professionally, rather than something scary you don't understand.

And I think more people like that would be a good thing.
Even if they still argued just as much but about what findings meant and methods. 

And Hank could have even more people calling for an encore.

What do you think?
Is 20 questions not as awesome as I think? Can you read even more into it?
Is there some other game that embodies scientific thinking even better or more portably?
Or do you just have a story of how science is awesome?
Let me know.