• Question: Do you ever doubt your own conclusions in your research?

    Asked by freddie to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      All the time. I double check what results I can, or I test to see if values that I obtain for certain parameters agree with any research carried out before my own – often I can’t text the values, but I can often check ball-park figures. Usually my doubt is in the error of the value – I’m now fairly confident my experiment has done what I think it was supposed to do, but there are intrinsic systematic and random errors in my work without a doubt – before I publish my work next year I will need to quantify them!

    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      All the time! Well perhaps it’s better to say that I doubt my results rather than my conclusions (I don’t draw conclusions until I believe the results!)

      My ‘results’ come from two different sources: computer simulations and real experimental results.

      With the simulations I usually have the difficulty of making 100% sure that the computer has done what I think it’s done – which can be harder than it sounds! Usually with these results I know what I’m expecting to see, so if it looks significantly different I start to ask questions… but sometimes that is where you see the interesting science! I can even sometimes get to the point where I’m dealing with the limits of what computers can actually do – this has introduced errors in my results before, and it’s hard to find it!!

      The other source, experimental results, can also be tricky. Usually I’m observing a beam of particles on ‘beam position monitors’, but there are any number of ways that these things could give you the wrong result, so you have to be very careful. After that, though, it’s just a matter of calculating the uncertainty on your results…

      Sometimes the hardest thing is convincing yourself that you’re right – after that, convincing everyone else should be easy 🙂

    • Photo: Geoff McBride

      Geoff McBride answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      The nice part of this question is it highlights my scientific paranoia. Yes I doubt every conclusion I have made often I have repeated experiments to confirm I’m right. I get a real ‘feel good’ moment when other scientists confirm my conclusions.

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      All the time! But I have to find ways of backing up what I see so I feel more comfortable with what I am concluding. Some more established scientists like having conclusions that others dont believe in because it starts interesting debates. Sometimes we get things wrong though, and as long as we admit to our mistakes no one really minds.

    • Photo: Robert Simpson

      Robert Simpson answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Some of my research is about ideas that need further testing. So I might publish a result that says I have a found a indication that something is true, or that says that something might be true. Then I, and hopefully others, will go and out and try to find more evidence for that idea or find evidence against it.
      A lot of science is about incremental ideas, gradually changing and heading toward a fixed result.

      Sometimes a really radical idea comes up, but truthfully this can be difficult for the scientific community to accept. Really radical ideas are often not accepted in their own time and take years to confirm or find evidence for. These ideas must be difficult for the people who dream them up or first find evidence for them – having confidence in a truly original idea takes courage.

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