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Asked by lanky to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 25 Mar 2011.
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Eoin Lettice answered on 21 Mar 2011:
Hi Lanky,
Yes I do. There is a great gang of scientists here in my lab and it’s great working with them on a day-to-day basis. We also have some good fun after work when we can escape the lab!
I also work with scientists around the country and around the world. I may not meet them very often face-to-face but we are all working on the same project and our work is all connected.
Very few scientists work on their own. You can get lots more done in a team and it’s more fun that way!Eoin
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Julian Rayner answered on 21 Mar 2011:
Hi lanky.
Absolutely. Collaboration is such a huge part of science, especially in a field like malaria, where working with scientists in malaria endemic countries is so important. Collaborations can work on many different levels. Sometimes it is about sharing technologies, things that one lab can do that the others can’t. Other times it is about sharing samples – pooling multiple samples gives you more power to believe that the results you find are generally applicable, rather than being possibly biased by the specific set of samples you are working on. Or else, collaboration can just be about intellectual input – it is very easy to get too close to your own data, and sharing it with other scientists is often one of the best ways to get a fresh perspective. Working with really smart people, and doing it for the good of humanity, is one of the most fun things about this job.
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Jemma Ransom answered on 21 Mar 2011:
Most of the time.,and it’s really vital for research that we collaborate and work with other people.. There’s only one of me, and I can’t do all the work needed for a publication on my own! But of course as with any profession you’ll occassionally meet someone you don’t really get along with but still have to work with. But us scientists are a friendly if eccentric bunch, and generally working with other people is great fun!
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Stephen Moss answered on 21 Mar 2011:
Hi Lanky
I certainly do, and it’s a good thing too because the work I do couldn’t be done without interacting with lots of people. I have about 8 people in my lab, and I supervise them jointly with one of my colleagues who is also a professor. We’ve discovered that’s it’s fun working as a team, and we constantly bounce ideas off each other. Plus there have been some famous scientific double-acts, like Watson and Crick, though I think they were probably smarter than us and definitely a lot more famous.
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Charlie Ryan answered on 25 Mar 2011:
hi lanky thanks for the question!
Yes i do enjoy working with other scientists – although as with any job there are people you get on with more than others.
It’s something that i have really enjoyed about I’m a scientist actually – normally as a scientist you interact with people in similar fields as yourself; for example i work at an engineering department at a uni, so the scientists i generally meet are engineers. But with this website its been great to chat with scientists in completely different fields, who i would really never normally meet!
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