• Question: what do you do all day?? Do you have to be clever to be a scientist??

    Asked by babyblue to Hitesh, Hywel, Mae, Nik, Tiffany on 8 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Hitesh Dave

      Hitesh Dave answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      As i said in my profile I mainly work in pathology lab where we check effects of our new drug(future medicines) on tissues..I prepared tissue slides to check under microscope…You don’t have to be clever but person need to be trained fully to perform the routine work and basic knowledge on pathology field would be beneficial…

    • Photo: Tiffany Taylor

      Tiffany Taylor answered on 10 Jun 2012:

      There are lots of things I could be doing on a normal day, but my day is usually split between the lab (where I do my experiments with bacteria) and the office (where I write results and read about science). A scientist is not just one thing – there are loads of different jobs which need science. For example, I am a scientist, but I couldn’t tell you much about how the universe works – and I’m sure someone who studies the universe couldn’t tell you much about how the genome evolves. To be a scientist you need to be really interested in your subject – the rest is easy and can be learnt.

    • Photo: Mae Woods

      Mae Woods answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      What do I do all day?

      I think, run computer simulations, have meetings, answer e-mails, make pictures to illustrate my ideas, do some experimental work, write reports and attend seminars.

      Do you have to be clever to be a scientist?

      To answer that question you really have to make a precise definition of what it is to be clever. Science involves

      1) Observation (either by eye, known as inspection, or by mechanical measurement, for example using a ruler to measure the size of a peanut). This can also include biological experiments

      2) Formation of a hypothesis. An idea that you believe to be true

      3) Testing your hypothesis using a scientific tool. Mathematics and philosophy are the best tools we have to understand the real world in a quantitative way.

      If you are confident that you can carry out these simple methods, then you have the right ingredients to become a scientist. Yey!

    • Photo: Nicola Ibberson

      Nicola Ibberson answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      I mostly work at a desk, reading DNA sequence and looking for any changes to what is expected. I talk to doctors and nurses to explain what genetic test results mean for their patients, and I calculate risks of disease and write reports. If we have a sample from an unborn baby, I might get to go in the lab to extract the DNA from it, but scientists in our lab don’t generally do much ‘hands-on’ testing – we have technicians who do that job. Being an NHS scientist is very office based!

      You have to be good at YOUR science I guess (not all science – I am totally pants at chemistry and physics), and spend time learning about what it is that you are required to do. But you don’t have to be some sort of crazy genius with white sticky out hair and funky goggles…

    • Photo: Hywel Owen

      Hywel Owen answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      Normal day:
      – Seeing students, half of them undergrads, half of them postgrads
      – Teaching physics to undergrads – most of the time is taken up in one of the teaching labs
      – Writing computer programs that predict how particles move in particle accelerators, so we can design them better
      – Doing lab experiments on one of our facilities, at the moment one in Cheshire called EMMA.
      – And these days, a lot of answering emails, mainly sorting out questions about various projects we’re working on

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