• Question: What dont you like about science?

    Asked by chelseacavey0 to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by rumplestiltskin.
    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I don’t like it when things go wrong, or when you have to do something boring like writing articles, making sure all the references to other people’s papers are correct, etc. But this is an important part of science – if you don’t write down what you do, no-one will know you did it!

    • Photo: Kate Husband

      Kate Husband answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I don’t like the way jobs in science when you are starting out are not permanent so you have to keep changing jobs every few years until you get to about 30.

    • Photo: Robert Woolfson

      Robert Woolfson answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      When something isn’t working and you have to spend an awful lot of time trying to get it to work. The repetition of the same experiment over and over can get very frustrating.

    • Photo: Matthew Pankhurst

      Matthew Pankhurst answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I don’t like how science is often too competitive. Some competition is good, like in sport the best players play in the best leagues, which makes the game better. But sometimes it’s so competitive that it takes up all your time – because you think someone else might be working harder than you and will get the results before you. This might mean that all your hard work doesn’t make as much difference as you’d hoped (you’re still a good scientist if that happens though).

    • Photo: Claire Lee

      Claire Lee answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      There is a lot of politics involved, as a lot about science is promoting the work that you do in one way or another. You can do great work, but if nobody knows about it it’s just about useless. And of course there will always be people who do the work, and others that end up in the limelight, and the two are not necessarily the same. And there will always be people who are prepared to do whatever it takes to get the results first, or to get the funding, or whatever.

      Science is a noble profession, but the players don’t always play fair.

      However, I will say, that while the people “higher up” may get fooled, the people around them usually don’t. So it’s always best to keep your own integrity.

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