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Asked by paulswarbrick1234 to Philip, Michael on 17 Jun 2011.
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Philip Denniff answered on 16 Jun 2011:
I don’t know if you meant me to answer this, but I received it, so here goes.
At the moment I am working on a method of taking small blood samples from a finger prick rather than the usual method of a needle in the arm. Then with these samples I measure the amount of drug/medicine that is in the blood stream. The small sample volume means I will be able to make sure that sick babies are receiving the correct amount of drug.
Can science go wrong? Yes, my method of sampling blood may not work, I already know that if the blood is thin I get answers that are too low, so I am trying to find ways round the problem.
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Michael Wharmby answered on 17 Jun 2011:
Right now, I’m writing up results for a paper, but I’ve alo been working in the lab making new (bright orange) cubic crystals called ZIFs. These crystals have lots of holes in them to store gas, which makes them interesting to my work, and they have the same structure as some naturally occuring minerals called zeolites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite
The second bit of your question is really good! In short, yes, science can be wrong and it’s actually what science is about. As a scientist you take all of the available evidence and build a theory to model what you see. Sometimes a new piece of evidence comes along which doesn’t fit the theory and then you have to either modify the existing theory or come up with a new one.
A good example is the experiment J J Thomson used to identify electrons. In a cathode-ray tube, electrons travel through vacuum before hitting a screen at the end which shows flashes of light for each electron impact. Taking this evidence, we can say each electron is a separate packet of energy (you can see a flash for each electron landing). So electrons must be particles.
But you can put two really narrow slits in front of the screen and deflect the path of the electrons. This is refraction, which is a property that waves show. So from this evidence we say the electron is a wave. Our first model, and that of the scientists at the end of the 19th century (that the electron is a particle) is not right. It’s not wrong as such, because it fits what we observe. The accepted theory is that the electron is that an electron behaves as a particle sometime and as a wave at others – confusing but that’s quantum mechanics!
An accepted theory like this is accepted because it fits all of the data that we have available at the time. Theory’s such as evolution and climate change are hotly debated, but the models are in agreement with scientific evidence currently available. Hence, although debated, they are the accepted models. It’s important to keep an open mind though and make changes where the evidence doesn’t fit.
As I say, awesome question – I could say so much more. Thanks!!
Comments
Philip commented on :
An alternative answer to the second half of your your question could be
No science is wrong (bad), but it can be misused.
Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) on seeing the effect of the A bomb said “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Advertising men love to misuse science, “….. kills 99% of house hold germs”, forgetting that without cleaning 80-90% of them would die within 24 hours if there was no food source.
Pressure groups often take one piece of data in isolation and quote that, without telling the whole story.
Then just because you can do it does not mean you should. Society must decide which areas are out of bounds for scientists.
Human stem cells
Animal / human hybrids
Genetic modification
Species creation
Chemical / germ warfare
Michael commented on :
The ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy was trying to understand the motion of the planets in the sky. The Greeks thought that the Earth was at the centre of the solar system and that everything rotated round it. Now if you watch the motion of the planets in the sky over a few days, you will see that as well as going forwards they ocassionally go backwards – so called retrograde motion. In order to explain this Ptolemy described the motion of the planets as orbiting the Earth, but then having an additional circular orbit on the Earth-centred orbit – an epicycle. Ptolemy’s model fitted all of the evidence he had about the motion of planets in the sky and allowed him to make (complex) predictions of their movements.
In the 17th century the astronomers Copernicus and Galileo began questioning Ptolemy’s system. They proposed a simpler system with no epicycles which put the sun at the centre of the solar system. This model fitted all of Ptolemy’s observations and also allowed predictions of the movements of the planets to be made more easily and with greater accuracy. This model is obviously what we now accept as the correct model.
The initial assumption of the Greeks was wrong – the Earth is not the centre of the solar system. It’s an important point that in science, if our data do not fit with our assumptions we must have another think about those assumptions.
Some helpful wiki references:
Retrograde motion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_retrograde_motion
Epicycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle