• Question: Do you work with people or by yourself

    Asked by anon-244170 to Pan-ngum, Natalia, Mick, Filipe on 10 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Natalia Brodaczewska

      Natalia Brodaczewska answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      I work in a team of scientists. We all do slightly different things, for example I will be setting up one type of test and my colleague will work on another kind of test. But we need to communicate well with each other to make sure that we organise our work well and all of the tests get done on time. Every morning we have a short meeting in which we can discuss any plans or issues. We often ask for each other’s advice when we’re not sure about something – it is very useful to learn from each other’s experience. Sometimes we also need to discuss things with scientists from other departments or with doctors – for example when we try to develop a new type of test, we need to find out more about a given disease or arrange with other departments to give us samples or access to equipment.

    • Photo: Michael Schubert

      Michael Schubert answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      I do a bit of both! When I am writing about science, I usually work alone – but when I do my research, I usually work with lots of other scientists to find out everything I need to know and to get help with experiments. When people come to ask me science questions for films or television or comics, I’m usually the only person who is working on science – but I still work with a big team of people that includes writers, artists, editors, actors, directors, and more!

      Modern science mostly happens in teams. Science is so big and so specialised now that no one person can be an expert in everything. That’s why we spend so much time talking to one another, going to conferences, and writing papers about what we learn – so that others can share our knowledge. If you read an article in a scientific journal, you will see that it has lots of authors. That’s because we need a lot of different experts to make sure that we know everything we need to and that we’re doing everything correctly in our experiments.

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