• Question: how are your experiments better than others?

    Asked by Alex to Kylie, Matt, Bex, RobB, Sam on 13 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Matt Dunn

      Matt Dunn answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Experiments are a scientists way of trying to answer questions, and so any experiment that gives an answer is a good one! There are many ways to try and answer the questions though, and some experiments give longer and more detailed answers, but it’s less about trying to be better than others and more about trying to get the right kind of answer. This is called ‘experimental design’ and is often more important than the experiment itself!

    • Photo: Kylie Belchamber

      Kylie Belchamber answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Good question Alex,
      I think a lot of scientist want to do the best experiments they can, and so we spend a lot of time planning, thinking about and designing experiments. We often take ideas from others that have done similar things, and change them so that they work for us.

      I don’t think it is true that every experiment is the best, as sometimes people get it wrong, or could have done it better. When you publish your work in a journal, first it has to undergo a process called ‘peer review’. This is when the paper gets sent to 2-3 other scientists, who will read it critically, and send you back comments. they will either say ‘yes this is fantastic!’ or ‘could do with a bit more work to explain this’ or even ‘this is not done well, please re-do some of it’. this process makes sure that everything that gets published is well though out, well executed, and makes sense to everyone else. This is how we know that we are doing good expeiments!

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