• Question: is it normal to get your work wrong, whether it is experimants or data anaysis?

    Asked by alice14 to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 25 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Hi alice14,
      I hate to admit it, but yes, things do go wrong. Obviously we try to get things right most of the time, but everyone makes mistakes.

      One of the beauties of science is that it is self correcting. If someone makes a mistake, other scientists can spot the mistake and correct it. This means that everyone is free to make mistakes. The important thing is that, if someone shows evidence that you got something wrong, you accept your mistake and move on.

      So many people out there are never willing to admit to being wrong or making mistakes (which is natural, noone likes being wrong). But in science you kind of have to.

    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Hi alice14,

      I made a wonderful typing mistake when I submitted my paper last year. I had the sentence

      “HadCM3 was sued in this investigation” It should have read “HadCM3 was used in this investigation”.

      It was very embarrassing when the reviews came back in and the people who reviewed it (like teachers marking my work) pointed it out to me.

      Everyone makes mistakes, it’s just important to make sure that you learn from them and don’t repeat them!

    • Photo: Nuala Carson

      Nuala Carson answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hey alice24,

      Yup its a pretty normal occurrence. A lot of the theoretical work we do is a little bit of trial and error, but all based on the best knowledge we have- try something and if it doesn’t fit then try something else.

      Experimental wise i can tell you about using computer models and i frequently get them wrong! They are so complex that it is really difficult to get the model to do what you want. I can spend ages doing something and then weeks later realize i forgot to include something really simple so all my results are wrong! That is so annoying when it happens but you never make the same mistake twice!

Comments