Ask yourself if you are stunting your thinking as well. A work environmentwith a majority of limbo scientists can be soul-crushing for whomever still nourishes some love for this job. Or they are too lazy to explore in their minds what they are really interested in knowing ("Why?"). This motivation can materialise itself in arrogant or even pedantic behaviour, like rudely trashinga colleagues work or always wanting to have the last word in an academic debate, but is also the driving force of people who enjoy disrupting dogmas and going against the establishment even if its just to prove the bigwigswrong. Original "why": Why did we choose this product? The passion to keep delving deeper and deeper into the realm of mathematics was kindled in me at a rather tender age. This question also provides insight into your career goals. A fairly common motivation amongst scientists is the sense that this work matters and that it should have a practical application. The life cycle of a frog, as featured in Science for High School Students by Harry Messel. How Does Life Live?, NYT Op-Doc https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/opinion/how-does-life-live.html. However as time passed and my friendships became deeper, I realized how many strings were attached to pursuing a PhD. Among these [], Re: Maybe your research will increase cancer survival rates, What is life when it is not protected from virus driven entropy https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3505769. Why don't we give you complete access! I was overwhelmed by the realisation that what I really wanted to do was at the core of what I had been doing for 20 years: science! New data shows the negative impact of long-term cannabis use on cognition and hippocampal volume at age 45. What do I need to achieve to move to the next level? An inside perspective on being a researcher and career advice, Sharing PhD experiences across the University of Warwick and beyond. Over the years I have met many scientists and the reasonsthat attracted them to a career in research are plenty. Heres a quick round up of some interesting answers to the questions I was asking: Assistant Professor of Practice, NYU-ECNU Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China, When it comes to basic sciences, research is full of potholes waiting to trip you, setbacks waiting to strip you of confidence, and few and far between these troughs, the sudden, unexpected glimpses of success. In a related experiment, neuroscientists Matthias Gruber, Bernard Gelman, and Charan Ranganath discovered that the activation of the brain in the case of epistemic curiosity precisely followed the pathways that transmit dopamine signals. Think about how you realized the questions that were bubbling up in your mind. I am motivated by being convinced that knowledge driven economies are relatively sustainable. My grade school education in science was very poor, which increased the importance of the media exposure. Register for comprehensive research tips and expert advice on English writing, journal publishing, good publication practices, trends in publishing, and a lot more. Practice Improves the Potential for Future Plasticity, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/opinion/how-does-life-live.html. Copyright 2023 StudeerSnel B.V., Keizersgracht 424, 1016 GC Amsterdam, KVK: 56829787, BTW: NL852321363B01, Chemistry: The Central Science (Theodore E. Brown; H. Eugene H LeMay; Bruce E. Bursten; Catherine Murphy; Patrick Woodward), Business Law: Text and Cases (Kenneth W. Clarkson; Roger LeRoy Miller; Frank B. Full Document. The objective is to get to the top! Explain the value of being a scientifically informed citizen within your community. That is to say, some permutation of my interests and my training, my clinical experience, and extracurricular education emerged as this good fight to involve and celebrate psychoanalytic ideas in an interdisciplinary fashion. Chimpanzees, studies show, can be curious. I suspect you have heard these kinds of questions. When I was about five years old, my father showed me the fossil of an extinct animal called a trilobite: ancient organisms that lived within even older oceans. Your email address will not be published. Expert Solution Want to see the full answer? This is perhaps the idealised vision of what it means to be a scientist: a free and creative spirit that bows only to the mysteries of science and is not conditioned by the restrains of a career structure. Postdoctoral Researcher in Palaeobiology, University of New England. Which of the following is an objective statement about an apple? In my work, Ive always been told that I should avoid asking the question "why." Hopefully, as we become more experienced, we learn how to ask the "why" question indirectly. Other questions are a daily occurrence. use a technology around jet injections didn't know much about my When you consider the work of natural scientists in general, how do you think developments in scientific thinking end up influencing how scientific study is carried out? We stop asking the question "Why?"