• Question: Is that true that if you are scientist you must have imagination????????

    Asked by vanessamosz to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 27 Jun 2012:


      I think so.

      When you are designing an experiment it necessarily involves imagination because you have to think of what different outcomes you could get, what could go wrong, what you will need etc. It also takes imagination to come up with the question you are asking in the first place!

    • Photo: Cees Van der Land

      Cees Van der Land answered on 27 Jun 2012:


      I agree with Emma.
      Scientists make/create/need new ideas on how to tackle a problem/research question. They are often trying to do something that has not been done before. To recognise where and how you need to do research you need new idea’s and imagination, since nobody has done it before, including yourself!

    • Photo: Michael Cook

      Michael Cook answered on 27 Jun 2012:


      Emma and Cees are totally correct, I think! You need to be imaginative. Sometimes you’re trying to explain something that no-one has ever seen before, and it’s hard to do that without a bit of creativity!

    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 27 Jun 2012:


      You must have some imagination to design experiments that you are going to carry out and you certainly need imagination if you are a group leader and putting proposals together with whole programmes of work that you will study. But there are important roles in science for people who are happy to do one type of experiments many different times with slight variation – these may be technicians whose role is very important in some of the high volume experiments. But of course with many such experiments, in recent years robots have been designed to take over repetitive work… But I believe there will always be place for people who are both imaginative and those who are happy to carry out experiments designed by someone else.

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