Question: Hi, i read an article saying drinking coffee everyday lowers your risks of getting demantia, is it ture, as far as you know; also, what do you do exactly when you're doing your PhD, do you still learn new stuff at a deeper level or do you do independent research on a topic?

Jan McKendrick answered on 6 Mar 2025: last edited 6 Mar 2025 14:14

thats a god question and shows why science is important. There might be one study (experiement) which says that there is a link, but we need to understand the experiment better – could there be other reasons why the risk of dementia was lower in that study? And what do other studies say (from what I’ve quickly read, there are lots of different answers).

Making sure experiments are done well and measure the right things is important. Making sure the analyses are right is also important. And understanding what other people have learned about the same thing is really important too.

Most PhDs look at a specific topic in more depth, learning a bit more about it but also trying to answer a science question that people dont know the answer to yet. So yes, independen
t research and more learning