Example of why scientific method needed

Writer Marilyn vos Savant (born 1946) has an I.Q. of 228, the highest ever recorded. She has a column in Parade magazine (included with many Sunday newspapers), where she answers questions which have been sent to her. Usually she has good answers. But sometimes she give an answer which exhibits a lack of knowledge of the subject. It appears that she has come to her conclusion by her reasoning, w/o sufficient knowledge. It looks to me like her answer this past weekend was a case in point.

http://www.parade.com/askmarilyn/2011/08/Sundays-Column-08-28-11.html

Q: I understand why using a fan on the back porch, where the temperature is 102, won’t cool me off, because the air is warmer than I am. But why does sitting in front of the fan make me feel hotter than not using a fan at all? I can’t wrap my brain around this! —Lisa Ballay, Round Rock, Tex.

A: Sitting right in front of a fan, especially when it’s turned up all the way, may cause your skin moisture (a.k.a. sweat!) to dry up, taking away your body’s main means of cooling itself. When the temperature is dangerously high and there’s no air-conditioning, spending long periods of time in front of a fan can be risky unless you mist yourself frequently. If your skin gets blown dry, you could develop heat exhaustion—or worse, heatstroke.

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The way our sweat cools us is by evaporating. This removes heat from our skin and the layer of air right next to it. The reason sitting in front of a fan on a more moderate day makes us feel cooler is that it causes the sweat to evaporate faster. It's conceivable that sitting in front of a fan in very high heat might cause us to lose moisture so fast it becomes counterproductive, but it shouldn't do it immediately.

I think a more reasonable explanation is that in very high heat, the fan blows away the cooler air by our skin, replacing it with hot air.

Looking at the comments, I see I'm not the only person who understands this.

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