• Question: how much of a difference do you feel you have made so far?

    Asked by cocoonut to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      @cocoonut
      Thanks for the question. This is tough!
      I would say at the moment I’m so early on I haven’t made much of a difference, but it’s all about little bits of work adding together rather than one massive discovery, so I like to think that everything I do is making a little bit of progress and helping 🙂

      Hope this answers your question!

    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi @cocoonut

      It can take a long time to make a big difference in science, but even a small difference can be important. At the moment the work we are doing is still quite new and we are still trying to convince other scientists of our theory. I hope in the future that our research along with others research will make a difference.

    • Photo: Rachael Ward

      Rachael Ward answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi @cocoonut,

      Tim’s right, it can take a long time to make a difference but I think I’ve contributed to some interesting discoveries. Probably the “biggest” one was when I was doing my PhD, my lab and I found a treatment that we believe could reduce the amount of paralysis a person suffers after spinal cord injury (like Christopher Reeve or Superman suffered). My lab are still working on it and hope to give it to people in the future.

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Scientists often don’t find out how much difference they have made themselves – they do experiments, and get results, but it can take YEARS for people to find out why something mattered, sometimes! There’s a famous saying (which is even around the edge of one of the pound coins) that scientists are “standing on the shoulders of giants”. That means, if we can see a long way (make a great discovery), we can only do it because of the great work done by people before us. There aren’t very many people whose discoveries are really appreciated in their lifetime, I’m afraid … So the answer is, I don’t know how much of a difference I have made, but I know that people have found what I do interesting. That’s what they said in the interviews, anyway!

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