Seems to happen a lot around here, someone does something differently to what you were taught or have learnt to do - immediately dismissed as rubbish or BS. Hate to mention it, but a bloke I flew with did indeed toss a can of oil onto a beach with the intention of testing the suitability of the surface. Not sure that I would have wanted to rely entirely on that, but it did bounce and roll, which coupled with my observations of scarcely indented footprints, convinced us that it was ok to land. It was.