• Question: Have you changed any of you or your views after discovering a particular fact?

    Asked by anon-291482 on 23 Apr 2021.
    • Photo: Steve Briddon

      Steve Briddon answered on 23 Apr 2021:

      Frequently! This is really what science is about. You have an idea and you design an experiment to prove yourself wrong. Often you are, and when that happens, you change your idea to match the data and go again. This is really the “scientific method” and it’s how scientific ideas move forward.

    • Photo: Rosie Goodburn

      Rosie Goodburn answered on 23 Apr 2021:

      This most frequently happens to me when I’m programming something. The views in question being “there are no bugs in this code.” Then I am rudely confronted with the reality that there are, in fact, many bugs in my code 🙁 Coding can be a humbling pursuit!

    • Photo: Karrie Liu

      Karrie Liu answered on 24 Apr 2021:

      “EVERYDAY” -> Because you learn something new everyday

      Especially when I found out what I read was “FAKE NEWS”; then I need to re-think about the information or situation that I was it.

Comments

  • Photo: Lucile

    Lucile commented on :

    Yes, it happens a lot! Sometimes with more experience, you can look at your data again and realise you might have missed something, or perhaps that more advanced methods could help understand the data better. But often it is also because other researchers have published their own work and provided you with additional information that make you question and re-evaluate what your previous views were. That is the part of science I love the most: all scientists contribute to the research effort, combining their strengths and expertise to help answer various scientific questions.