• Question: why do you like science and why do u like making sure people understand stuff ???

    Asked by sophiec15 to Scott on 15 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Scott Melville

      Scott Melville answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      The short answer is: because it’s great fun! 😀 Doing science is great, and I want to share that joy with as many people as possible.
      I like science because it’s really honest – sometimes it gets things wrong or makes mistakes, but it always owns up to it and tries to do better next time. I think that makes science really trust-worthy, it’s basically just trying to give the best possible description of the world which it can 🙂
      It’s really important to understand stuff! For example, in the US, they built all of their water pipes out of lead, without really understanding what lead was and how it behaves. Then all of these people died, because if you drink even small amounts of lead it can be poisonous! Oops! Understanding the world is super important because it stops these kinds of things from happening 🙂
      On an everyday basis, how many bogus TV adverts do you see which claim that something is ‘scientific’ or gives some statistic like ‘97% of dentists approve..’? Most of that is complete garbage, but if you don’t know anything about science, then how can you tell? Too people many get fooled by scams and dodgey TV ads 😛

Comments