• Question: when you realized that you have made a mistake do you try to make it right or do you start all over again?

    Asked by lilbowen to Ruth, Paul, Lyn, Katy, PB on 16 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by tyler99.
    • Photo: Ruth Mitchell

      Ruth Mitchell answered on 16 Jun 2013:

      That depends on the sort of mistake that you’ve made, on the experiment and when during the experiment you’ve realised that you’ve made the mistake! If it is something critical in an experiment or you realised right at the end, then you have to start again. Usually though, you can rescue an experiment by being flexible and moving things around a bit.

    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      One of the axioms of science is not to repeat old mistakes, but to make new ones in new and interesting ways!
      Isaac Asimov once wrote:
      the most exciting words a scientist can say is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘ that’s odd?’

    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      It depends. No one wants to start all over again but it happens all the time. You usually try your best to fix it but it doesn’t always work!

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      The kinds of mistakes I most often make are the kinds that can’t be made right! For example if I mixed the wrong cells together, I can’t very well take them apart again – I’d have to throw the whole thing away and start again with new cells. If I had spare cells ready, I could just do that one step again, but if I had used up all the cells I had I’d have to go right back to the beginning with new cells!

      If it’s a small mistake (a little too much of this, or too little of that) sometimes I just write it down, and remember it when I get my data back. That means if I see something funny in my data I can ask myself, ‘Is that because of the mistake I made, or is it a real result?’ Usually I’d still have to go back and repeat the experiment anyway, just to get clean results, but you can still get valuable information that way.

    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      Hi lilbowen-

      that depends. Generally speaking, I will have to start all over again, as I like to make sure that everything has been done correctly. On occasion though, it might be possible to easily put right a simple mistake.

      Bacteria are fussy things and don’t tolerate mistakes very well! 🙁

Comments

  • Photo: Paul

    Paul commented on :

    That depends on the mistake. Sometimes a mistake can be turned into a positive thing, and may actually mean that you discover something else. For example, the discovery of penicillin happened accidentally!

    If the mistake is a critical one which happens right at the end of an experiment and will ruin the results, then sometimes I have no choice but to start again. This can be very annoying!