• Question: What difficulties have you come across since you have become a scientist

    Asked by 074538dsilau to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: William Davies

      William Davies answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      The main difficulty is getting money to pursue the questions that you want to answer. You normally have to apply for funding to various research councils (ultimately the government), or to charities (e.g. Alzheimer’s Research Trust or Wellcome Trust). Other difficulties include racing other scientists to try and get an answer to a question first (in order to claim all the credit!), arguing with reviewers over whether your paper’s good enough to publish, and dealing with awkward personalities (I guess this is true of any job though!)

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Hello! I think one of the main difficulties is trying to show everyone else that what you are doing will make a difference to the world. That’s why events like I’m A Scientist are so good!

    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I think the biggest difficulty in science is that most jobs are on short contracts (3 or 4 years) so you have to keep changing jobs but thats also quite exciting. It can be tough to keep going sometimes when experiments are not going the way you want them too but again if we knew what would happen and the answer to all the questions we wouldnt need to do the experiments and we wouldnt have a job. Most of the time the job is interesting and you are surrounded by likemined people who will help you though any tough patches and remind you why you love the job. For me science is all about the unknown, being nosey and doing something no one else has done before and thats really cool.

    • Photo: Jane Henry

      Jane Henry answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      It can be difficult to get a permanent job. I tried for ten months before I got a research post I wanted, then I had four interviews in three days and got all four jobs. Applying for grants can be time consuming. Finding time for research and not being overwhelmed with teaching and admin can be difficult too. Luckily touch wood I have not had too many difficulties with the science itself, coming up with ideas, designing ways of tackling them, getting people to participate. Can be difficult to find time to write up and disseminate all your findings.

    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      I never know enough… in science new information is coming out all the time so you are constantly learning. This also makes it really exciting and it is nice to be challenged.

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