In an essay called “Patience Amid Long Experiments“, in the Adventist Review, Justin Kim says “The pitch-drop experiment teaches our faith community some lessons.” Kim goes on to explain:
“A parody of the world-famous Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize was established in 1991 to recognize achievements that first ‘make people laugh, then think.’ In 2005, this ‘honor’ was given jointly to John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland for one of the world’s longest experiments called the pitch-drop experiment….
“More than 500 years ago, another long-term experiment started among God’s reforming church. This experiment tested whether the Bible was really the only source of authority for the Christian (sola scriptura), was the first source against which all other things were tested (prima scriptura), and whether the entire Bible could really be interpreted by itself (tota scriptura). Nearly 174 years ago this experiment began, and it continues its maturity in God’s Advent movement.”