Question: when you make a "scientific breakthrough" or when you have found an answer to your research, what do you do? who do you show, and if it can help our society, how do you incorporate it into our lives??
Keywords: answer, benefit, breakthrough, communication, incorporate, public, publication, research, show, society
When I make a breakthrough I drink beer.
I talk to my students, then my wife. You have to publish it in a paper to let everyone else know.
To make a breakthrough become part of our lives may take some time. We work on really basic things. These can then be developed by others into things for society. For example, one of the drugs we make – we’ve shown how to make it, but a company (somewhere in Malaysia, I think) will actually make it on a large scale so people can take it. We do “research” but people outside the Uni do the “development”
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Love the question! Here’s my answer.
What Should Happen
1) Tell the boss.
2) Mention some of the work in a research group meeting.
3) Write up a scientific article, (similar to a lab report), and get it published in a journal, (magazine filled with science articles).
4) Once the article is published, tell everyone what you did and how you did it.
5) Get famous!!
What Really Happens
1) WOOHOOO!!!!! and other loud cheering. Or it could be silent but the biggest smile on your face will give it away that you’ve done something incredible.
2) Tell the boss.
3) Write up a scientific article, (similar to a lab report), and get it published in a journal, (magazine filled with science articles).
4) Once the article is published, tell everyone what you did and how you did it.
5) Fame doesn’t arrive, well perhaps not straight away and you continue your work.
Here is the thing with research that can get people upset and think that putting money into research is a waste. Not all research will come up with something useful for society, and even fewer findings become incorporated into our lives. So what people think is that we should only give money to research that will give us real results. Though how would we know what a good result is without knowing what a bad result is?
Research in Australia is funded by the government and also by businesses especially when it comes to R&D, (Research and Design), the area where current problems are being solved by designing new technologies. When something works things get incorporated into our lives pretty quickly. Another area of where results become part of our lives is medical research. When a new medicine is found to work in the lab, it goes through several rounds of testing to make sure that it really does work and also doesn’t kill anyone or cause any unwanted side effects before it can be given to people.
When scientific discoveries are incorporated into our lives, we are told about it in the news or sometimes even in advertising to give us information. What is also really nice is that we are given time to change and adapt to the new technologies. Although this doesn’t apply to gadgets like the iPhone and iPods even though a lot of science has gone into developing them. People just want the latest one!
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When we make a “scientific breakthrough” or when we have found an answer to our research, we write a a report that describes this discovery. Next, we submit the report to a journal. If a panel of scientists (ie referees) appointed by the journal agrees that the research was done correctly, and the results are right, then the journal will publish the report.
This is how scientists communicate their results to other scientists, through publication of reports in “refereed” journals.
If the discovery is worth lots of money, then sometimes the discovers will try to keep it “secret” so that others can’t make use of it. Sometimes, they try to legally protect the idea or discovery by applying for a patent. The discovery might never be communicated to other scientists through journal publication.
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So far my breakthroughs have been very small, so I’ve only made it to about number 2) on Mags list. It’s important for big breakthroughs to be written up as a scientific paper and submitted to a journal to be published. This way, other scientists and non-scientists can read about what you’ve done, and they may be able to use it to help them in their work.
The effect on people’s lives depends on what you’ve discovered. If it’s a great new drug, then maybe people will soon be able to use it to make them better. If it’s a better way of farming, then people can use it to produce more food. A lot of breakthroughs don’t have immediate benefits to the general population, but might result in a new drug or better farming practices in 10 years time. Maybe your discovery is something that makes it easier for other people to work on their own discoveries. That’s why it’s important to tell other people about what you’ve found. The most common way in science is by writing a scientific paper, but some discoveries also make it into the news so that more people find out about it. And if people are impressed by your research, they will give you more money so you can go and do more research!
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