• Question: Have you ever made a ground breaking discovery

    Asked by face520paps on 24 Sep 2024. This question was also asked by grey520fops, hays520phew, park520phew, kune492sup, yaps520hogg.
    • Photo: Rachael Eggleston

      Rachael Eggleston answered on 24 Sep 2024:

      I don’t think so, no- but I did once find out that some of the pitcher plants I studied were a totally different species (type) than we thought they were. That was pretty cool!

    • Photo: Michael C Macey

      Michael C Macey answered on 25 Sep 2024:

      Nothing super ground breaking, which is typical for science, as it is often a series of small discoveries that build together – I have isolated a few novel strains of microbe, some of which seem like they may be producing antimicrobial compounds, so hopefully in the future I can say yes!

    • Photo: Camilla Cassidy

      Camilla Cassidy answered on 25 Sep 2024:

      I’ve not ‘discovered’ anything, but I’ve been the first person to prove something! A lot of the time in science everyone knows things but unless someone can prove it, and we agree that the way they’re showing it is fool proof, it can’t be taken as fact. I proved that animals in the sea bed change their behaviour in response to the environment, including the temperature and what other species they live nearby. By changing their behaviour they change their roles in the ecosystem. I proved that some ways of measuring this are better than others – this is important because it means other scientists can be more confident in their results and we can plan better ways to study and help ecosystems.

    • Photo: Martin McMahon

      Martin McMahon answered on 4 Oct 2024:

      I have not made a ground breaking discovery on my own, but I did do some of the science work that is used to make the 1p and 2p coins in our pockets today.
      I also did a Ph.D, so I’m now a Doctor, and that meant I had to discover some new science or make a new theory.

    • Photo: Michael Schubert

      Michael Schubert answered on 4 Oct 2024:

      Science is mostly small discoveries. I haven’t made any groundbreaking discoveries on my own, but I have been part of teams that have made really cool discoveries – like a new species of dinosaur or a protein that does something nobody knew it did. These things may not sound earth-shaking, but they are building blocks to big things. Finding a new function for a protein can lead to a new cancer treatment or a cure for a genetic disorder in the future!

    • Photo: Liam Herringshaw

      Liam Herringshaw answered on 10 Oct 2024:

      Not really, not if you’re thinking about things that change lives or push science in a surprising new direction. However, as I study fossils, most of my discoveries are (literally) ground-breaking in one way or another!

    • Photo: Luke Fountain

      Luke Fountain answered on 21 Nov 2024:

      As others have said, most scientists don’t make ground-breaking discoveries, and that’s totally okay! But most scientists contribute new knowledge, discovering things that we previously didn’t know. Anybody with a PhD has done exactly this – a PhD means that that person contributed new knowledge that was previously unknown.

      We do sometimes make inventions as part of our jobs, for example I have developed a new technology for delivering nutrients to plants in space – these types of developments usually arise when we face a unique set of challenges that we cannot solve with existing tools.

Comments

  • Photo: Andrew M

    Andrew M commented on :

    I’m afraid in my case I haven’t so much blazed a new trail through the vast forests of ignorance as lightly pruned the shubbery of ignorance. Still, any research breaks new ground and adds to the sum of human knowledge, even if most of mine came to the conclusion that no-one else need be troubled by doing this again, which is kind of useful to know.