• Question: Will your work create new knowlege or adapt past knowledge?

    Asked by looneymidget to Louise, Michaela, Sian, Steve, Yvette on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Louise Johnson

      Louise Johnson answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Good question! All science does both. Even revolutionary theories like relativity are based on the ideas and the data that previous scientists came up with. But every scientist adds his or her own bricks to the wall. Every paper and every PhD brings us forward a little bit.

    • Photo: Michaela Livingstone

      Michaela Livingstone answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      I’m happy to say, yes 🙂 Research aims to find out new things and work how things are working. My research will hopefully give us some more knowledge about how a cell controls which genes are ‘switched on’ or ‘off’ under certain conditions.

    • Photo: Sian Harding

      Sian Harding answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      My work will create new knowledge about how the heart works and the causes of disease

    • Photo: Steven Kiddle

      Steven Kiddle answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Both. I developed a technique that used two old techniques to great effect, this is an adaptation of old knowledge.

      But I have also found out that a gene can make a plant more resistant to disease and this is truly new knowledge.

    • Photo: Yvette Wilson

      Yvette Wilson answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      In general scientists are assessed by the results that they publish and you can’t publish something as novel research if somebody has already published it.

      In my current project I am discovering new genes that are involved in the lignin pathway in barley. Its not quite like making a massive breakthrough like the theory of evolution, but I think such breakthroughs happen because the right scientist at the right place and the right time puts together all the bits of information that lots of scientists before them have published.

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