• Question: What do you think is the most important aspect of science?

    Asked by BrynSleeps to Adam, Adele, Deborah, Matt, Samantha on 10 Jun 2017. This question was also asked by jailee756, 989actj35, mchinx.
    • Photo: Matthew Lee

      Matthew Lee answered on 10 Jun 2017:

      The most important aspect of science is the scientific method. This is the process of doing science and advancing our understanding of the world. The scientific method is the reason we can be confident that when you take a medicine it isn’t going to kill you, because we have gone through the scientific process to test the medicine to make sure it does what we think it does. Have a look at this picture, it gives a really nice simple explanation of what the scientific method is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#/media/File:The_Scientific_Method_as_an_Ongoing_Process.svg

    • Photo: Deborah Aitken

      Deborah Aitken answered on 11 Jun 2017:

      I totally agree with Matt. If you don’t follow a real scientific method then your results are at best useless and at worst really dangerous! Science has no room for “alternative facts”.

      Sometimes scientists don’t mean to give wrong results but their experiment wasn’t right which is why the scientific method and experiment design is so important.

      For example, I could take a rock into my lab in the UK and watch it 24/7 to see if it repels tigers. When no tigers were near the rock it looks like my experiment proves the rock keeps you safe from tigers. But that’s nonsense because there weren’t tigers before I got the rock! So the experiment is badly designed and the results are meaningless.

    • Photo: Adam Hargreaves

      Adam Hargreaves answered on 11 Jun 2017:

      I agree with both Matt and Deborah, being able to show something and then that being reproducible (by any scientist around the world) is incredibly important. Anyone can claim anything, but if nobody can test that and confirm that it’s true, then it all falls to pieces. It’s very important to test and to verify a scientific idea (a hypothesis). For example, Isaac Newton put forward the hypothesis of gravity, the idea that there was some force that caused objects, in his case an apple, to fall towards the ground. Since then, millions of people have dropped apples…ipods…freshly made pieces of toast etc. and they’ve all fallen towards the ground. This has elevated gravity from a hypothesis to a scientific theory, which is an explanation of a phenomenon which has been repeatedly tested and shown to be true. That reproducibility and testing is key to the scientific method.

    • Photo: Adele Wratten

      Adele Wratten answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      For me I think the most important thing is to always be true to the science, and never let pressure from deadlines get in the way of doing work you’re proud of

    • Photo: Samantha Ahern

      Samantha Ahern answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      I agree with Matt, Deborah and Adam. Reproducibility is crucial, as is good peer review and a healthy dose of ethics.

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