Areas of my expertise: this. There exists a card game called Eleusis, and a simpler variant , Eleusis Express, which are played with standard playing cards and which were purpose-built for precisely this purpose; simulating the scientific method, with emphasis on the non-incremental regimes of scientific progress. These rules can be found here, Express here, and the BoardGameGeek page for the game is here. Expanding this to larger card numbers, etc. should be an easy modification to make, and I would happily do so if there were interest. I can attest that the game is quite fun.
Areas of my expertise: this. There exists a card game called Eleusis, and a simpler variant , Eleusis Express, which are played with standard playing cards and which were purpose-built for precisely this purpose; simulating the scientific method, with emphasis on the non-incremental regimes of scientific progress. These rules can be found here, Express here, and the BoardGameGeek page for the game is here. Expanding this to larger card numbers, etc. should be an easy modification to make, and I would happily do so if there were interest. I can attest that the game is quite fun.