• Question: how do you think your experiments will change the world?

    Asked by Jake that kid to Richard, Charlotte, hannahmoir, Majid, Sam on 7 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by Blue, Phoebe, Livi.
    • Photo: Charlotte Green

      Charlotte Green answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      Wow this is a tough one. It is not very often in science that one persons work changes the world. Most big discoveries come from years of work from multiple scientists. However, I hope that my research will help us have a better understanding of a disease that affects 70% of obese people, called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. By understanding the disease better it will hopefully lead to better treatments or preventions of the disease and thus benefit peoples health. I also hope my research will inspire others 🙂

    • Photo: Hannah Moir

      Hannah Moir answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      Tricky question, I hope that the work I do influences things to make a difference. For one example we are working with patients with a cancer- lymphoma to see how exercise effects them and if it can help them feel better and hopefully this will make a small but influential differences. It takes time and teams of people to change the world and across generations so we all play our part and perhaps you too will help influence positive change.

    • Photo: Sam Smith

      Sam Smith answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      Thanks for the great question. I agree that a lot of our work as scientists is done collaboratively within teams. So not that many people get to say that they changed the world. Bummer.

      But, that’s always the goal – to ensure what we do is translated to help society. Personally, my work is about how we can prevent cancer from happening. So for example, we could encourage people to give up smoking, eat more healthily, or do more exercise. If my work is able to achieve any of these kind of goals, I would be happy. The challenge then is to make sure that we repeat this with lots of different people so that lots of people in society can benefit, and we will see dramatic reductions in cancer.

      Some of what I have done has gone on to change public policy – for example I was part of a team who showed that a particular type of test is less painful among patients undergoing investigations for bowel cancer. Together with another group who showed that the test was also more accurate, we were able to convince the NHS to replace the old test with this new one. It’s these kind of small ‘wins’ that have the potential to change the world.

Comments