• Question: If you had to chose between doing experiments and writing conclusions on pieces of paper which would you go for?

    Asked by jessstphils to Vera, Steve, Sam, Katie, Ed on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Well, I don’t do experiments. What I do instead is try to make a model of the world using mathematics, and see if I can find out anything from that. So in a way I am just writing conclusions on pieces of paper. An example is if you want to predict how many rabbits there will be on a desert island after a year if you put one male and one female there. You could find this out by actually doing it, or you could try and predict the answer before by thinking about how often rabbits reproduce on average and then using maths to calculate the expected number.

      In science you need both theory and experiment. Experiments to see whether theory is right, and to suggest things to write theory about, and theory to tell you what experiments to do.

    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      It depends – some experiments are suuuuper boring and you just sit there and wait. I don’t normally do experiments but when I collect my data I often spend weeks in the cellar of museums measuring bones. I like this work very much but at times I prefer being at my desk and using my brain rather than measuring data, for which you need no brains at all. For one study, I measured and typed in 11 500 single measurements from museums!!!

    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      I like doing experiments best. Writing the conclusions can be boring, but then it’s pleasing when you get to publish them in a journal that other scientists will read. Ultimately you have to write up your experiments otherwise no-one will know what you have done and it will have been a waste of time.

    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      I would always rather be doing experiments – I never feel like I have enough data for my conclusions, I always think ‘well maybe if I do this I will understand this a little better’. It is obviously important to have conclusions though, because otherwise there is no point doing any experiments.

    • Photo: Katie Marriott

      Katie Marriott answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      To me the writing conclusions is part of the experiment. I do prefer being in the lab but sometimes it is very exciting to look at the results and writing conclusions as science doesn’t always give the answer you expect! There’s not much point doig an experimant if you don’t write the conclusions because you can’t share your observations with everyone which is always very exciting.

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