• Question: Is it difficult to believe in all the things that happen in science?

    Asked by 557bsmf22 to Ellen, Elliot, Hazel, Rupesh, Thomas on 17 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      Thanks for the question!

      I think the good thing about science is that when scientists finish an experiment and tell people their results, they have to also tell people how they did their experiments. This means that other scientists can try to see if they get the same results. If the other scientists get the same answer, you can be fairly sure that the results are right.

      There have been lots of science stories where people get some very exciting results, but other scientists try to do the same thing and it doesn’t work for them. If that happens, you have to be a bit suspicious about the results and whether they are really true. There are also some bad scientists out there that lie about their results, but they are usually discovered when other people pay close attention to the work and the results they have claimed to get.

      So I think an important part of being a scientist is to actually be a little bit suspicious about the new things that happen in science until there is lots of good evidence for it.

    • Photo: Thomas Biggans

      Thomas Biggans answered on 18 Jun 2016:

      Yes sometimes it is. I think it’s important as a scientist to keep an open mind either way when you hear about something new in science. It might be true it might be false it’s up to scientists to convince everyone else that what they’re saying is true but also accept when they’ve been proved wrong.

      In science we deal with evidence and this evidence has to be reproducible that is to say if someone else does your experiment then they should get the same result. Whenever we present our work we are asked questions about it and when we try and publish our work it has to be looked at by another scientist and they have to agree with what you’re saying before it gets published.

      I think its the beauty of science that new evidence can completely change what we think to be true but only if it holds up against the checks that the rest of us put on this evidence.

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