• Question: What is your biggest fear to do with science.

    Asked by Stormme to Frank, Ian, Isabel, Jared, Zena on 14 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Zena Hadjivasiliou

      Zena Hadjivasiliou answered on 14 Mar 2015:

      Hmmm good question. I think sometimes I am scared that most of the funding that goes to science research is for research that will lead to commercial applications or have a direct impact on medicine. Although it is of course very important for us to keep finding new medical treatments and technology that will improve our lives directly, I think science for the sake of knowledge alone is also important. We are creative and curious beings and we should be encouraged to try and satisfy our curiosity and be creative in all sorts of different fields. Also, a lot of the things we have discovered over time that are now super useful in medicine and technology we did not know the applications of to begin with. For example electricity was first discovered by trying to understand electrons and atoms but our study of it has lead to a massive technological boom!

    • Photo: Isabel Pires

      Isabel Pires answered on 14 Mar 2015:

      My biggest fear is that scientists ability to do science becomes controlled and restricted by interests of corporations and industry. Science should not be a business…

    • Photo: Frank Longford

      Frank Longford answered on 14 Mar 2015:

      I agree with Zena in that my biggest fear is that people will stop seeing the benefit of pure science and only value research with a direct “use”. Many different discoveries in history have come from finding a unpredictable application to previous research that at the time may not have had a use. For instance, something called Lie algebra was developed in the 19th century by Sophus Lie for no real purpose but now underpins quantum mechanics and therefore modern chemistry. Basically you can thank Lie for your iPhone, although he wouldn’t have had any idea what you were taking about, and probably thought that you were being grammatically incorrect, since he died in 1899.

      Obviously in our modern world we need science to provide us with crucial discoveries that could be life saving and possibly even planet saving, but to discredit research that doesn’t appear at first to be “useful” would be a huge mistake and only serves to destroy the creative and free thinking atmosphere in the scientific community that has given so much to the world.

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