• Question: what is it like to be a scientist?

    Asked by sjflanagan to Enda, Jean, Kate, Kev, Tim on 10 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by natasha3, taytay.
    • Photo: Jean Bourke

      Jean Bourke answered on 10 Nov 2012:

      Hey,

      That’s a tough one! In many ways it’s exactly the same as any job: we all look forward to Fridays too!

      The major differences are probably in how we approach problems and take in information. We are taught to analyse and question. To be a scientist you need to be naturally curious, to want to know the how and why of things. We don’t take things for granted, we seek to understand them.

      Pretty much anyone can be a scientist, there are many different areas suited to people with different strengths and interests. You can be an astrophysics tracking asteroids or you can be a botanist searching for rare plants in the rainforest, you can be a chemistry making anti cancer drugs or you can be a biochemist working out how a cancer cell differs from regular cells. There is literally a whole world out there waiting to be prodded, poked and analysed.

      I realise that scientist tend to be shown a certain way in tv and films but really we’re just normal people. We like a cup of tea and a biscuit as much as the next person! We’re also not all hyper-intelligent geniuses, we’re just all quite curious…

    • Photo: Enda O'Connell

      Enda O'Connell answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Hi SJ,

      Being a scientist means you are always questioning things, not in an annoying way (hopefully), but we are trained not to take things “on faith”, instead we want to figure things out to see how they work. Science is the best way we have to explain the world around us, whether that is something big like climate change or the Big Bang, or something smaller like how our cells work and what happens when they stop working properly to become cancerous, so in my opinion it is one of the most important jobs out there.

      For years people (me included when I was in school) imagined scientists as slightly eccentric, white-haired, older gentlemen, but Science has become much more fashionable over the past few years. We’ve started to see much more Science on TV, with presenters like Brian Cox (Wonders of the Universes, Stargazing), Dara O’Briain (Science Club) and even Richard Hammond (Brainiac: Science Abuse, Miracles of Nature) presenting Science in a much more engaging way. Even a programme like The Big Bang Theory, where the scientists are, admittedly, pretty neurotic, show Science being carried out by young men and women, who have lives outside the lab. Like the rest of the world…

      We all have families and friends/girlfriends/boyfriends/partners/spouses who we like to spend time with. We all like TV and the Internet and Cinema and follow sports teams and like music and art, just like everyone else. And importantly, and to contradict my first sentence slightly, we know how to switch off so we can enjoy silly movies and TV shows without bashing our heads against the wall when they get the Science wrong…

      We’re not complete nerds all of the time

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