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Asked by Evie! :) to Aaron, Abbey, Keith, Natalie, Pete on 13 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Emily.
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Natalie Garrett answered on 13 Nov 2015:
Arguably the most important thing about scientific research is integrity. What I mean by this is that a scientist has to be honest and do their best in everything they do. So, we are not allowed to let our biases affect our results. We have to report on everything exactly as it happened. It’s like a code of honour – you have to tell the truth as best you can.
When scientists don’t do this, bad things inevitably happen. You will probably have heard in the media that there was a scare from when a scientist claimed that vaccines cause autism. The terrible, shameful thing about this is that this scientist was a fraud: he had NO REAL PROOF of this claim, but still the media reported on it. Now, we are seeing preventable diseases like whooping cough coming back because people believed the news reports and didn’t vaccinate their kids even though honest scientists were trying their best to explain that the story was a lie, even though they had tons of proof that vaccines work fine and there’s no proven autism risk with them.
If you’re a scientist, people tend to think what you say is true because they know that being a scientist means you’re meant to have integrity. This gives you a responsibility to say the truth, and this is why I think it’s the most important part of scientific research.
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Aaron Boardley answered on 17 Nov 2015:
[That annoying moment when you lose everything you typed because you pressed the wrong button…]
That’s a really good question!
There are lots of important things about research: keep asking questions, share your findings with others, be honest and clear about your results.
However, one thing that I think sets science apart is keeping an open mind. Scientists don’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) believe their theories just because they came up with them, or because they’ve spent their life working on them. A good scientist is always ready to change or adapt their theories if new evidence comes along which proves them wrong. That way, we know that scientific theories are supported by all the evidence we have available – not just because ‘somebody said so’.
The most important thing about scientific research, in my mind, is the way this method works. The fact that anybody, at any time, could publish some work which disproves some questionable theories means that theories we do develop over time get stronger and stronger. The most important thing, I think, is to keep an open mind and to never stop questioning why things happen.
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