• Question: In your career as a scientist I can understand you probably get a few stupid questions or hate if you don’t mind sharing, please do share!

    Asked by anon-181546 on 11 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Haragan

      Alex Haragan answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      There’s no such thing as a stupid question – only stupid answers!
      >
      Not sure who said that first but as a broad point I think it’s mostly true. Often the simple or stupid sounding questions are actually very important or clever questions. And if you really understand what you are doing you should be able to explain it to anyone.
      >
      I don’t think I’ve really received any hate for being a scientist. Working as a doctor I’ve met a lot of people who are angry – but its rarely been because of something I’ve done, mostly directed at me because I happen to be the doctor there, and I think that’s mostly because in that situation people are scared or don’t understand whats going on.
      The shouting and anger doesn’t help (even if I can understand it). What helps is asking questions and giving answers!
      So I never mind answering questions.

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      There are no stupid questions – most of science is working out ways that wont work in order to find the ways it would work. People do get very frustrated at times when the complexity of the problem is not fully understood and expectations are not met or as they intended, but usually this comes down to making sure everyone is very clear and transparent and has as much information as possible available to them.

    • Photo: Alexandra Hogan

      Alexandra Hogan answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      I don’t think there are any stupid questions. One interesting question I sometimes get asked is “why do we need mathematicians – hasn’t all the maths been figured out already?” But this is just a great opportunity to talk about all the new maths and mathematical applications that are being developed all the time!

    • Photo: Joey Shepherd

      Joey Shepherd answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      As others have said, there are no stupid questions. Asking questions is what being a scientist is, after all! And most of us are happy to answer any questions becase we like talking about our subjects and hope that if we can explain things properly, other people will also be as interested in our subjects as we are!

    • Photo: Joaquin Zacarias Cabeza

      Joaquin Zacarias Cabeza answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      Absolutly agree with the others, people have always asked questions even if they are not scientists, I think this is part of being a human. In research there are not stupid questions, sometimes the simplest question is the most interesting one! I am glad to get questions from everyone but if I dont know the answer I look for it and in the end learn more.

      On the other hand, there some questions that can not be fully anwered today, for example when people ask me if we have found the cure of cancer then I like to talk about my research and share with rthem all new advances that we have reach until now.

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 11 Jun 2018:

      I agree with everyone here – there is no such thing as a stupid question. Or, at the very least, I certainly hope there isn’t because I have most certainly asked some silly questions in my time! People (including myself) sometimes tell ourselves we are asking a ‘stupid question’, but in reality, we are just asking a question to understand something. And, if you’re asking someone a question, for one – you cannot be stupid for wanting to learn, and second, if they are really someone worth asking a question to, they should be able to answer the question, in an understanding way, without making you feel like the question is a ‘stupid’ one.

    • Photo: Hannah Farley

      Hannah Farley answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      As per, there are no stupid questions. The fact that you’ve asked a question already means you’re showing an interest, so I really don’t mind that. I’ve not really had hate as such – I have had people ask me what the point is of my science, and one “you’re not really going to make any difference though” – those aren’t really hard to take anymore, because it just makes you think about why what you do matters. I occasionally get questions about animal research, but to be honest its not something I advertise that I do to my friends and family, and often people are just generally interested in what it’s like, and often shocked by how well the animals are looked after and how tightly controlled it is.

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