Time can be tricky

Recently, I came across the article about peer review in natural sciences. And what intrigued me the most was the information that two-thirds of researchers, nowadays, failed at reproducing another scientist’s experiment. That shocked me. And as I was thinking about this problem a few issues arose.

Firstly, as I read in the article, the problem of reproducibility is the result of modern want of big breakthroughs. News, TV, and the Internet constantly expect scientists to bring to them new and shocking scientific theories. Even as a global society we are used to quick and new solutions (because of the Internet culture-we do not have to wait long for the answer, we can have it in a second). Therefore, scientists are always in a hurry and they want to discover or invent more rapidly and bring new, better solutions to our current biggest problems. And because of the short time in which scientists are expected to bring the results of their work, they make mistakes. It seems like a possibly very harmful approach in science, however it has its advantages. Looking at this from the other perspective it might help the development of science. Rapid discoveries or inventions might quickly help to solve our current problems. If the scientific experiments were to last for decades the development would be slow and not as exciting as it is now. However, the pressure to discover or invent things in a short period of time is tricky. It has its advantages, but do they overweight the drawbacks?

The concept of time is different in different areas of knowledge. For example, in human sciences it is sometimes to conduct a psychological experiment which last one day, same of the examinations might last even for decades! The same is with the economics, the trend in the market might be observed only after a long period (compared to other methods of obtaining fact in other areas of knowledge) like 10 or 50 years. On the other hand, in natural sciences some experiments might be a matter of a day or two. But what takes more time is an analysis and collecting the data. So, in fact, even then we can talk about new theories or breakthroughs after many years.


I believe that what I learned from this article is that time can be sometimes the key in the process of producing knowledge. It can help, but it can also lead to quickly jumping into conclusions which may result in errors and wrong assumptions.

Articles:
7 of the World's Longest-Running Experiments

Most scientists 'can't replicate studies by their peers'

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unseen knowledge

Some time ago my friend told me this short story: I was going time from school by bus. That day I felt a bit annoyed because I forgot to take my headphones and my way back home looks as if it's going to be quite long because of the traffic in the city. So I sat be the window next to a group of teens. Sitting next to them I heart their school stories, what they did today at school and so on. You might think that it is just a normal, everyday situation, but I started to think: Well, I go back go by bus every day for past 6 six or so. However, I cannot remember listening that kind of conversations were I was 9. I remember talking and hearing about some children TV shows or new toys someone received. Does it mean that I did not hear conversations about more teen issues just because I was not a teen or I wasn't interested in that topics?   My friend is also an IB student so we started to think and discuss this question. From the previous question the knowledge question arose Can
Read more

Why we might never find all the answers

Image
 Since I was little I always loved sci-fi movies. Expolring the universe and interstellar journeys fascinates me even right now. Recently, I've been particularly interested in the first human journey to Mars. right now NASA with cooperation with other international companies are testing new rockets and technology that would be able to take men kind to Mars in the near future. I watched plenty of documentaries and conferences about the obstacles that right now unables NASA to complete this mission. 2 particularly interesting videos about sending humans to Mars which made me think about this issue   As I was watching I thought a lot about the obstacles that scientists need to overcome in order to send humans to Mars. Of course the cause of these obstacles is our current knowledge which unables scientists to produce more technologically developed devices.  But what is really an obstacle? Is it our knowledge or is it the important materials which do not exist? Can our k
Read more

Am I an expert?

Last week I was going back home with two of my brothers and my dad from the family trip. As we were talking, suddenly I realized that my little brother, who is now seven, kept asking many questions and when my other brother or I answered to his question he still waited for my father's answer. Firstly I thought that it might be because our dad is his role model and then he believes that my father has greater knowledge so  naturally he is more likely than me to answer correctly. This got me thinking about experts. In this situation, my dad was an expert and my little brother-a person which desired knowledge. We can observe that in media, especially tv news or in newspapers, when analyzing a global, political or any other issue mostly the experts occur and provide not also the historical facts and scientific theories, but also their point of view. Of course in the ideal world, when each person thinks critically and independently, he or she can create their own opinion by looking for
Read more