• Question: what is your favourite part about science

    Asked by face499sty on 15 Feb 2024.
    • Photo: Clara Ferreira

      Clara Ferreira answered on 15 Feb 2024:


      The fact that I can talk to patients and offer them a new solution – the way that they react when it works, always makes me cry a little bit. I made someone happy and gave them more time with people that they love.
      What can be better than that?

    • Photo: Erin Pallott

      Erin Pallott answered on 15 Feb 2024:


      I love that I can teach others about it. Especially my area of infectious diseases, it’s FULL of interesting information that makes you go “woah”.

    • Photo: Andrew McDowall

      Andrew McDowall answered on 15 Feb 2024:


      Over time, the thing I’ve come to enjoy most about it is the beautiful absurdity of it.

      Outside of mathematics, science is the only philosphy, the way of examining the world that is, at every point, knowingly and self-conciously wrong about everything, all of the time. Nothing is ever absolutely known and unshakably right, every idea or thing we think we know about the world just hasn’t yet been shown why it is wrong or is not yet wrong enough to not be useful. Every time we think we’ve found some great truth we find a new, beautiful and wonderous complexity beneath it that shows it to be wrong. Yet, despite being wrong about everything and each wrong being built upon an great mountain of previous greater wrongs we’ve sought to patch-up and correct, it is the only philosophy that reliably and consistenly predicts what is, or what could be, or what might have been but awaits to be found. It is the most beautiful cloth of finest weave and shimmering colour, made from patched and tattered rags.Like matter itself, the closer you examine it the more tenuous it appears, the more it disolves into nothingness, and yet great structures, culture, and civilisation is built on the back of it. It can withstand the greatest blows and presures without breaking and yet it flows easily at the slightest touch from even the least of us with next to no resistance.
      It’s beautiful and comical and wonderful and absurd.

    • Photo: Paul Laurance-Young

      Paul Laurance-Young answered on 16 Feb 2024:


      You never know what you are going to find and you can be endlessly curious. At the moment I have one project looking at how well DNA can be preserved for testing in diagnosing colon cancer and another looking at (really, REALLY nasty) bacteria from patients, which are resistant to any antibiotic we can throw at them..

    • Photo: John Clark-Corrigall

      John Clark-Corrigall answered on 16 Feb 2024:


      I really enjoy working through problems, trialling things and eventually seeing them work is a great feeling! I think that the teaching element of being a PhD student is great too. Every year we have new students coming through and seeing them develop is amazing. It really puts my journey into perspective too.

    • Photo: Rouzana Pulikkal Thumbayil

      Rouzana Pulikkal Thumbayil answered on 16 Feb 2024:


      Science for me is endlessly curious. Facing challenges and doing research on that keeping a hypothesis. Sometimes the hypothesis will have no meaning. The fun part is the walk through a route with no clue.

    • Photo: Simone Girdham

      Simone Girdham answered on 16 Feb 2024:


      The variety – I am constantly learning new things, new technology whilst helping people get better.

    • Photo: Kirsty Lindsay

      Kirsty Lindsay answered on 16 Feb 2024:


      I love finding out things that no-one else knows yet. JUst for a little while I might be the only person in the world that knows the Thing, then I tell my colleagues and they get excited about knowing the Thing too!

    • Photo: Bruno Silvester Lopes

      Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 16 Feb 2024:


      To discover new things each day and find meaningful solutions which can contribute to provides novel solutions to challenges that humanity faces each day!

    • Photo: Priscilla Tng

      Priscilla Tng answered on 17 Feb 2024:


      The best thing about science for me is being in the lab and trying out new experiments. These experiments help us discover new things that we didn’t know before.

    • Photo: Barbara Shih

      Barbara Shih answered on 18 Feb 2024:


      There are a lot of problem-solving involved – it is like trying to solve a puzzle in a video game.

    • Photo: Rachel Edwards

      Rachel Edwards answered on 19 Feb 2024:


      Thinking up different ways of approaching a problem. Scientists are continually looking for answers or new ways of doing things, and I love the process of thinking about solutions and trying things.

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 19 Feb 2024:


      There are two things that would consider my favourite aspect of being a scientist. The first is first out new stuff that no-one else knows. Then linked to that is trying to explain what I’ve found out to other people, especially the next generation of scientists.

    • Photo: Kirsty Ross

      Kirsty Ross answered on 19 Feb 2024:


      Finding out things that no one else has! Nothing quite like look at something that no one else has seen before 🙂

    • Photo: Alexander De Bruin

      Alexander De Bruin answered on 20 Feb 2024:


      I get to find out new things all the time and push what’s possible.

    • Photo: Tia Fletcher

      Tia Fletcher answered on 23 Feb 2024:


      My favourite part about science is that everyday is different, I never know what to expect which makes my day really interesting. I also like travelling and sharing my science with others.

    • Photo: Kevin Burke

      Kevin Burke answered on 26 Feb 2024:


      Working with lots of different people and teams (sometimes all over the world), working on complex problems that may not have an answer (and being comfortable with that), and having fun.

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