• Question: Does your work affect people?

    Asked by polly to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by 07semplemo, anon-4552.
    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I hope so! The aim is to try and understand how and why people communicate the way that they do, so we can understand why it is a problem when things go wrong. People with autism, schizophrenia, parkinsons etc. have real problems communicating with faces, so we need to understand how these processes work. Very good question – scientists should always think about how their work affects people!

    • Photo: Betul Arslan

      Betul Arslan answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      My doctoral work was targeting better anti-depressants and brain-cell protecting drugs development, so that time I felt it is a direct affect on people’s lives. My current work is more philosophical, I am trying to understand how evolution works in particular, does it repeat itself or not, therefore I don’t think in the short term my work does not have a practical impact on people but it will change the way we understand world.

    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I think my work might interest people-but it isn’t directly involved with people as such- just our earliest animal ancestors.

    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I think my work does impact people but to what extent I think depends on the project. Sometimes I work on projects that directly study human culture, those studies have some direct impact on peoples lives. Studies detecting the spread of information are very closely linked to studies that examine the spread of diseases- both travel through the same kinds of networks of people. Hopefully some of my social learning models can eventually be used to study the spread of diseases and help to curb them.

      Having said all that I do not think there is anything fundamentally wrong with what we call ‘blue sky research’, or studying the kinds of things that do not have an immediate impact on peoples lives. Some of the most amazing advances in human history have come from this kind of science.

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