Undergraduate science research projects and students - School of ...

Undergraduate Learning in Science Project Working Paper 5case, scientific work which stands the test of time means lines of researchwhich have kept going for a long time. The other interpretation was thatscientific work is the product of what scientists do; the scientific theoriesand other knowledge claims proposed by scientists. From this perspective,scientific work which stands the test of time was taken to mean theorieswhich have had a long history of being accepted within the scientificcommunity.There were five distinct reasons which students put forward to explain whysome scientific work stands the test of time. Two of the reasons were usedby the majority of the students, the other reasons were put forward by only asmall number of students. These reasons are described and illustrated below.3.4.1 Revolutionary breakthroughsStudents saw significant and long-standing scientific work as coming aboutwhen scientists in a field are aware that there is a problem and someindividuals propose a new way of thinking about it which accounts for theevidence. A number of students named particular individuals as having madesuch a contribution.If it is something ground-breaking, maybe Einstein orWatson and Crick.....like Watson and Crick, there was somuch interest in DNA at the time and I mean the fact therace was on, and they got that molecule and I think it is ofinterest to the scientific community as a whole and it isquite ground-breaking stuff, then yes, those sort of thingstend to stand out... 1.E.62.I suppose how revolutionary an idea is ... I just think ofthings like Watson and Crick 1.K.86.If it was something really significant then obviouslypeople are going to remember it like when penicillin wasdiscovered. 1.J.55.Comments were made on how such breakthroughs come about and thefactors that promote and constrain such change. The importance ofindividual imagination and ability to think about a problem in new ways wasrecognised.Yeah, I think that there’s obviously certain theories thathave lasted a lot longer than others and it obviously takesa certain brain intelligence to ... it’s the brain that tellsme something ... that one way to do is to go, you knowleaps and bounds ahead of everyone else and so thereforeit’s taking everyone else to catch up, that seems to havehappened in history.....and I think the development ofideas ... it’s rarer. I think that that’s the only way that the33