• Question: Are there any procedures which your work has to go through before it can be recognised globally & shared to the nation?

    Asked by sidrah to Dalya, Derek, Sarah, Tim, Tom on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Tim Millar

      Tim Millar answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Yes, peer review. This is a process where some people around the world read about the work we have done and make a decision whether its real and good enough to publish. then it gets placed on the web and published in journals and made available for everyone else to read.

      This is the basis of how science controls itself and ususally works well, although sometimes it doesn’t always feel fair especially if the peer review panel decide that your work is not good enough which happends fro time to time. You usually get a chance to reply to their concerns or go away and do more experiments, but its not nice when it happens.

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Yes – what Tim said!
      🙂

    • Photo: Dalya Soond

      Dalya Soond answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Agreed.

    • Photo: Derek McKay-Bukowski

      Derek McKay-Bukowski answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      As Tim says, “peer review” is the main one. For work to be taken seriously, it really must be subjected to careful checking by other scientists, looking for mistakes, making sure it all makes sense and is correct.

      Sometimes, for big news, there might be a press release as well. That also means checking things to make sure that you have your facts correct.

    • Photo: Tom Crick

      Tom Crick answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      Exactly: peer review. This is a very important process; the future of peer review is currently being discussed by the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee.

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