The Social Side of Science

Kelsey Hill
Michela Laverty
Lauren Ingham
Katelin Mitchell

This is a reading from the Understanding Science website that we decided to read and discuss as a group.

We found the beginning very interesting when it describes the difference between a stereotypical scientist and just actual scientists. Scientists are not all nerdy and boring, they do not just sit in a lab alone trying to solve problems. They are highly social and have to collaborate with several people in order to do research. Teaching children that the stereotype about scientists is false, and instead showing students that science can be interesting and involves fun exploration can increase the interest kids will have in science as they grow up.

After reading this article we realized that it relates quite well to class. It went into detail about the processes scientists use and go through and it is very long and specific. We saw that their way of research is very similar to the AMI diagram that we are using. Communication is the biggest process they use because this way they can get different views on research, decrease biases, and make sure that scientific misconduct is kept to a minimum. This is highly important because scientists are extremely passionate about their research and if someone doesn't show respect to work, stay honest,  or follow the ethical guidelines the discoveries can be false and cause a disaster.

Another part of the process scientists do frequently is backtracking to previous investigations to solve problems later on. In this article it gave us a couple examples of studies where scientists had to retrace their work because they felt like there had been a mistake. One example was about this scientist, Geoffrey Chang, who had a full research project going on about the physical structures of proteins in cell membranes. After several published articles about his work, he went back to previous research and found that he had a glitch in the computer program he had been using. Discovering that all his work had been calculated wrong, he had to turn around and start all over again, finding where he went wrong and what he needed to change. Even though this news was most likely discouraging, and very time consuming, it shows that the scientific process is still not a strict process, certain steps do not need to be followed right after another to get work correct. Scientists need to bounce back and forth to develop deeper research. Just like these professional scientists, we need to use the same skills so we can learn more about science and open our horizons to new questions and experiments.