• Question: Being a scientist must be hard work do you find the work you are doing easy? what kind of problems do you face?

    Asked by richardtabeart to Hywel, Joseph, Poonam on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Dr Hywel Jones

      Dr Hywel Jones answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Well like any job or task at which you want to succeed there is an element of working hard. Luckily, working in science is something I choose to do and something that I enjoy so the hard work is made up for by that.
      One of the biggest problems we face to trying to get the work that we want to do funded. Lots of scientists have lots of ideas and they all want to have their work funded so its a very competitive situation and you are not always successful. You have to try hard, try again and keep coming up with good idea.

    • Photo: Joseph Cook

      Joseph Cook answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      The work is definitely not easy. On the whole, if some scientific research is easy to do, somebody has already done it and doing new and original work is an important part of science.

      Often the hardest problems that you face as a scientist are not necessarily ‘scientific’ problems though – they are often problems with getting funding for your work or getting access to facilities or equipment that you need.

      There’s often a lot of politics in the running of organisations, and universities are no different. Sometimes you find that arguments between academics can get in the way of some work being completed, which can be extremely frustrating.

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