Science Education

I've had six years of college education in physics, followed by three years of graduate school. I've taught college-level physics, and yet I've never had or taught a class where the professor gave this exam:

Science 101 Exam

The professor performs some experiment in front of the class which the class hasn't seen before. The experiment is explainable by material taught in the class, but not obvious.

Question 1: Provide one physically plausible explanation for why the experiment turned out the way it did.

Question 2: Provide a second, distinct, physically plausible explanation for why the experiment turned out the way it did.

Question 3: Describe an experiment which will determine which of your two explanations is the correct one.

(More advanced classes would be asked to derive equations describing each of the explanations and their experiment).

This simple three-question exam distills the essence of what science is and how it is done in the real world. Practicing scientists spend their entire careers working on different bits of this exam (that fraction of their careers not spend on departmental politics, that is).

Yet I've never seen this type of exam actually given. Why?