• Question: If you find new things that no-one else has ever seen before how can you make sure that what you have found is accurate and believable?

    Asked by ilovebiologyxxx to Sheila on 18 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 18 Mar 2011:


      What a great question! So you love biology huh? Hmmmm 😉
      OK so generally if you find something new the way you test it is by being able to recreate the experiment. If anyone else can recreate it and get the same results then it must be accurate and believable.
      Its a bit harder in space science because we can’t just go off to Saturn to recreate experiments! So what we do is present what we see and give a good case for it and trust in our own work for it to be accurate, but you present data with error margins too. And you make it believable by backing up what you see with good arguments and good physics and you can use evidence from the past too.
      So I guess it is a bit more like being a detective than a scientist!

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