Question: Hullo My name's Lily and I'm 13 - 14 later on in June. Although you may have that on your screen already... The most interesting and important aspect of science is, in my opinion, the ethics involved in each scientist's research, and so it is about that that I want to ask you. I'm a vegetarian and a fervent believer in animal rights, so the most important question I have to ask is pretty obvious: Do you believe in testing on animals, and will any of your products, if you win the money, be tested on animals? That's the main question I wanted to ask you, but I looked on your profile and it seems you have very good taste in music, so I also want to ask if the name of the band in my username (Supertramp) is familiar to you, and if so, if you like their music ;) Also, do you watch anything involving Harry Hill? He is the other component in my username, and, as you can read at the top of the screen, those two combined make for eternal happiness, so it's quite important that you know of them both. I hope you reply soon, Lily P.S: Please can you tell me the meaning of your joke? All my friends are a bit confused :S Thanks!!

Joseph Cook answered on 13 Jun 2010:

Hi Lily,

I also believe animals should have rights and that animal testing should be avoided if possible. For example, I don’t think things like cosmetics should ever be tested on animals. However, I also believe that people are more important than animals and so I agree with animal testing for important things like medicines if they have the potential to help humans. There are strict regulations for animal testing, and rightfully so.

The money in ‘I’m a Scientist’ is to be spent on science communication rather than science research, so it will not fund any type of animal testing, regardless of who wins. I’m currently working on making new types of hydrogels and there’s a slim chance that some of these could have applications in things like wound dressings, but there are tons and tons of experiments that we need to run to see if the gels would be suitable for such things before that type of testing would be considered. There would also be lots of tests of toxicity using cells before animal testing would ever be considered, and if there was strong evidence of toxicity then testing on animals would not be carried out.

I’m not terribly familiar with Supertramp I’m afraid, but I do know a few songs. I particularly like the song ‘Dreamer’. I went to see Harry Hill doing stand-up comedy at an event in Battersea a few years ago, and he was extremely funny. I’ve also seen ‘TV Burp’ a few times.

My joke is a bit silly, but I like it. In science, a ‘mole’ is a number – 6.022 x 10^23. This is a big number – written out in full, it is 60,220,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is the number of atoms of carbon in 12 grams of pure carbon. It’s useful to do calculations in terms of moles rather than atoms because atoms are so tiny and there are loads of them, even in tiny things. My joke is a pun based on the fact that guacamole, a tasty food containing avocados, has the word ‘mole’ in it. You’ll probably cover this in science within the next couple of years – moles that is, not guacamole!

Hope this answers your questions, and let me know if you have any more!