• Question: Has one of your results ever been unexpected?

    Asked by anon-193419 to Morwenna, Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 11 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      Yes, definitely! The reason we do science is to find new things out – so there are always surprises along the way. I work in clinical trials which should only ever be done if we truly don’t know if a treatment works or not, so we might have an idea of what to expect, but we don’t know for sure. The unexpected results and not knowing is what makes working in science so exciting 🙂

    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      I have yet to reach the end of a clinical trial that I am working on and therefore still waiting for the results! Clinical trials take a lot of planning and time to set up. In my shortest study my patients are followed for 1-year but allowing time to recruit all the patients means that the study can actually run for about 2 years before you get to see the results! Hopefully for me that will be in early 2019 🙂

    • Photo: Iain Staniland

      Iain Staniland answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      Pretty much all the experiments/research I have done has ended up with things being different to what I thought would happen. It is one of the fun things about being a scientist, trying to understand what your results mean. Biology is rarely predictable and wild animals never do what you expect!

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