Question: Why did you do the science you do?

Allyson Lister answered on 11 Oct 2020:

Years ago I saw a tweet that describes my research area in just a few words: “Metadata is a love note to the future”. What does this mean? All the science I do centers around making sure we are saving, cleaning, and even writing the structural blueprints for the data created by scientists. How does this happen?

There are three main parts to doing science. First, asking a question. Second, running an experiment to test that question. And finally, the third part is sharing and checking your results. These three steps are like one big circle; scientists go around and around, running an experiment again and again. They only stop when they are sure that the data is good enough.

While most scientists focus on the first two parts, my research happens in the third part. My research is important to me because scientists HAVE TO share their data correctly in order for science to work. What would happen if scientists never shared their work? Or, if they only shared their work by mailing their lab notebook to one person at a time? Or if they wrote down their experiments in such messy handwriting that no-one could understand it?

In order for scientific data to have any value at all, scientists need to be expert sharers.

My job makes sure that all of us scientists share our research in ways that are easy to understand, easy to find, and easy to use. And by doing that, we’re letting future scientists know that we care enough about them to make sure we future-proof the scientific data we make today.