• Question: if you beleive your theroy is right would you go to extree lengths to prove them?

    Asked by keast to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 18 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Hi keast!

      If I’m pretty sure about a theory then I will definitely try and prove it!

      Before I do my work, I write down something called a ‘hypothesis’. A hypothesis is my theory about what I think is going to happen. For example, my hypothesis might be: if I toss a coin 100 times then half of the time I’ll get heads and the other half of the time, I’ll get tails.

      After I’ve formed my hypothesis, I will test it by doing experiments. So in this case, I would toss my coin 100 times and write down the results. I would then use the results to figure out if my hypothesis was right or wrong! That’s how a lot of science works đŸ™‚

    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Science is all about gathering evidence to support an idea or theory. Scientists are always coming up with new ideas about how the world might work – but for anyone to believe them then they need evidence to back up their argument!

      For example, in some of my work I use simulations to make some predictions about how I think animal groups might behave (e.g. to look for food or navigate home). This is a theory but to prove it I would need to come up with some evidence that backs it up. An example of this was when we used experiments on humans to show that our simulation predictions about how groups behave were correct (we used humans because animals were too difficult to control in the experiment we wanted to do!)
      http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~ecodling/EACresearch_groupshumancrowds.htm

      I am not sure how much extreme lengths I would go to prove a theory – I would always try as much as possible though. Unless you can gather evidence to match and support your theory it will never be useful!

    • Photo: Jessica Chu

      Jessica Chu answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      I think I would. I think that’s what most scientists do because our predictions for new experiments are based based on current knowledge and theories by doing loads of experiments.
      Back then a doctor called Dr Barry Marshall swallowed a sample of stomach cancer/ulcer causing bacteria called Heliobacter Pylori because no one believed when he told them that they cause cancer!
      And yes he later developed the same symptoms he saw in his patients. Until then, scientists had believed that bacteria were unable to survive in the stomach’s acidic environment. A bold move!

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