• Question: Do any of you have proven theory's which have not been disproven by a college or another scientist?

    Asked by to Clare, Divya, Ian, Jess, Lewis on 15 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 15 Mar 2014:

      That’s a tricky question, because it depends how you think about science! Most scientists tend to think that we can disprove a theory, but we probably couldn’t prove it (although we might support it!). Let me give you a simple example:

      If we thought that all swans are white, we could look at lots of swans and see what colour they were. If we found just one black swan, we could say ‘aha, our theory that all swans are white is wrong’. However, if all of the swans that we saw were white, we need to know that we have seen all of the swans in the world and that would be tricky to know whether we have seen them all. So we could say ‘well, all of the swans I have seen have been white, so that supports the theory that all swans are white’, but you would probably not want to say that you have proven all swans are white, because you might not have seen all the swans.

      So, I have some ideas about how humans learn things and how that is different to other animals. I think that my research supports those ideas, but there are other scientists who disagree with me. That’s a good thing, because that means that we all have to try to find all of the evidence that we can.

    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Yes I agree with Lewis!

      When scientists think they have found something out, they publish a paper in a journal (basically like publishing an article in a magazine). Then other scientists read it and can repeat the experiments that you did and see if they get the same results, then they publish their experiments so other people can see if their work supported or didn’t support the original paper. It’s a big conversation that can last centuries!!

      I have made observations about hydrogels (the type of molecule that I work on) and no body has disagreed with them yet, but that doesn’t mean it is proven right! Someone may come along with a different explanation for what we have seen, then we will have to make new experiments to find out if we can work out which is right!

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      We generally agree on things in the lab so noone’s trying to disprove but we’re forever making guesses and getting it wrong.

      Technically in science if it’s a theory that means it’s something we have a lot of evidence for and is generally accepted as being correct – like the theory of gravity. If it’s just an idea or guess then it’s a hypothesis.

      I do get an evil thrill out of proving another group wrong though – there’s a lot of rivalry in science but we’re usually friendly even with our rivals – they’re the ones who judge our work and decide if it’s fit to publish.

    • Photo: Clare Nevin

      Clare Nevin answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Not yet – I am still working on my own work for now which is pretty novel (not very much research going on the sperm field) so hopefully my stuff will be brand new.

Comments