Question: Do you ever find your job confusing?

Judith Sleeman answered on 20 May 2020: last edited 20 May 2020 12:01 pm

Yes!! All the time!! Most of the experiments we do raise more questions than answers and, even with a well-designed experiment, there are always many different ways to interpret the results. Often, it’s only years later when we do a different experiment or when a new technique is available, that we understand our old results. I have a big file of ‘results I can’t explain’ that I sometimes go back to! It’s also sometimes confusing to try and balance different aspects of my job as I do undergraduate teaching, run a research group and have a lot of other admin work to keep on top of as well. Balancing the different demands can be a real headache. The most confused I ever get, though, is reading other published work on a subject where there are two (or more) different points of view supported by different types of experiments done in different labs. Sometimes the results supporting opposite points of view are equally compelling and I can’t decide what to think. That’s how science works, though.