Yes, definitely! I think doubt is part of science: there’s no point trying to work something out, or do an experiment to see what happens, if you already know how something will work or what will happen.
I used to do a bit of “modelling” using a computer: there’s some complicated theory that you can’t solve with pen and paper, so you get the computer to do it for you. And sometimes the computer would spit out really strange results, which is when I had to find some pen-and-paper way (or another computer way) of seeing if the result made sense. Most of the time I had made a mistake in telling the computer what to do, but sometimes the strange result WAS real.
Absolutely – but most of the time that’s part of the process! When I’m doing experiments it’s to find out something about how a system works or how an animal or human responds to a change in diet at different life stages. When I first started out in my science degree I thought that basically everything about how the body works had already been discovered, and there were only a very few small gaps that needed filling – but once I started in research I quickly realised that there is a huge amount that we still don’t know and that a lot of things that we learn as being ‘facts’ might not actually be right!
So, my work is a lot about knowing what has been discovered already in my field and trying to design experiments which can fill the knowledge gaps. But, because the body is an incredibly complex machine, and because there is a limit to what we know about how all the systems in the body interact under different conditions – there is always some doubt as to what the answer will actually be!
At the end of the day, if our best guess (which we call the hypothesis) turns out not to be right – we can still learn something new and important about the systems involved. This has happened to me many times 🙂
That’s a really good question because sometimes, even if you’ve planned out your experiment and it seems to be going to plan, there’s something that just does not feel right and you start to doubt yourself.
That’s when I usually stop, and double check what I have done so far just to make sure I am adding what I should be adding in the right amounts! This is really important to check because some experiments, like the ones I do with cells can tae a long time to work.
Growing cells can take weeks and if you make a mistake at the beginning and find that out three weeks later, you have to start again and its such a waste of time and money – not to mention frustration!
Hi cnixon,
Yes, definitely! I think doubt is part of science: there’s no point trying to work something out, or do an experiment to see what happens, if you already know how something will work or what will happen.
I used to do a bit of “modelling” using a computer: there’s some complicated theory that you can’t solve with pen and paper, so you get the computer to do it for you. And sometimes the computer would spit out really strange results, which is when I had to find some pen-and-paper way (or another computer way) of seeing if the result made sense. Most of the time I had made a mistake in telling the computer what to do, but sometimes the strange result WAS real.
1
Hi
Absolutely – but most of the time that’s part of the process! When I’m doing experiments it’s to find out something about how a system works or how an animal or human responds to a change in diet at different life stages. When I first started out in my science degree I thought that basically everything about how the body works had already been discovered, and there were only a very few small gaps that needed filling – but once I started in research I quickly realised that there is a huge amount that we still don’t know and that a lot of things that we learn as being ‘facts’ might not actually be right!
So, my work is a lot about knowing what has been discovered already in my field and trying to design experiments which can fill the knowledge gaps. But, because the body is an incredibly complex machine, and because there is a limit to what we know about how all the systems in the body interact under different conditions – there is always some doubt as to what the answer will actually be!
At the end of the day, if our best guess (which we call the hypothesis) turns out not to be right – we can still learn something new and important about the systems involved. This has happened to me many times 🙂
1
Hi cnixon,
That’s a really good question because sometimes, even if you’ve planned out your experiment and it seems to be going to plan, there’s something that just does not feel right and you start to doubt yourself.
That’s when I usually stop, and double check what I have done so far just to make sure I am adding what I should be adding in the right amounts! This is really important to check because some experiments, like the ones I do with cells can tae a long time to work.
Growing cells can take weeks and if you make a mistake at the beginning and find that out three weeks later, you have to start again and its such a waste of time and money – not to mention frustration!
1