• Question: have you been able to disprove your work?

    Asked by anon-201742 to Sophia, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      Up to now, I haven’t disproven anything yet.
      You might be surprised to hear that the most interesting result for a scientist would be something they didn’t expect. This usually means they haven’t understood. So then, they have to go away and understand it!

    • Photo: Andy Buckley

      Andy Buckley answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      I make mistakes all the time. It’s not really disproving, more realising that you missed something and need to update a bit…. again and again. And in the end we make something good. That’s not just a science thing. This is maybe a bit easier for experimental scientists, though: we don’t have a huge investment in any one theory. Successful theorists tend to be smart enough to not have all their eggs in one basket either 😉

    • Photo: Sophia Pells

      Sophia Pells answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      I’ve found that some things that I thought would work don’t work, but haven’t disproven anything major. Like @Meirin said, it’s exciting when a theory gets disproven because it means that physics isn’t working the way we thought. (might not be exciting for the theoretical physicists that came up with the theory though)

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