• Question: @allscientists do ther scientists think your theorys and experiments are right or wrong??

    Asked by ellierylance to Tim, Suzi, Simon, Rachael, Damien on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by livmarshall.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      @ellierylance
      Hello!
      This is a really good question – I think part of science is meant to be conducting research to FIND OUT whether your idea is right or wrong, so if you believe too strongly before you start, this is bad because it might influence you.

      I really don’t know whether I’ll find that cannabis is bad for psychosis and depression or not, and that’s really exciting.

      I hope this has answered your question 🙂

    • Photo: Rachael Ward

      Rachael Ward answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi ellierylance,

      Good question. One way our work gets accepted or approved by other scientists is when we publish our experiments in scientific journals. In order for it to get published, the editors of the journal send it out to other scientists in your area of research and they review it. If they like it and think you have done the right experiments to prove your idea, it gets published. However, if they think you’ve missed something important out, they can ask you to do more experiments and then send it back later.

      I’ve had a few papers of my research published now. Sometimes I had to change it a bit but not too much so I guess that means people thought my experiments were planned out well and answered the question well. When you get a paper published, everyones really happy and we have a party!

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I think a lot of other scientists think my theories are right – and I’m doing the experiments now to prove it! Also, I maybe wouldn’t have got a University to let me do my research there if they thought I was completely barking up the wrong tree …

      But, in a way, in a lot of science, being right or wrong isn’t the point. It’s more about doing the experiments and having the discussions about your theories. If you turn out to be wrong, that’s fine, and you can learn from that. The crucial thing is to prove that you were wrong, and find out WHY you were wrong, and change your theory so that it is a little bit more right.
      In some parts of science, it probably isn’t possible to be completely right – and, in others, no-one has decided yet, so there are different scientists that do things different ways, and no-one says one of them is better than the other one, because they both get some good results, so neither of them is completely wrong! That happens a lot in medicine. If there are two different ways of treating a disease, one way might suit some people better and another way might suit others better, because they use different drugs and people have different drug allergies, or whatever. But, as long as neither of the ways of treating this disease has serious side-effects, then neither of the ways is wrong – it’s just that they’re both right for different people, depending on the person being treated.

      PS Didn’t I talk to you in the chat on Monday? Good to meet you!

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