Question: what is your favorite memory of being a scientist?

Nadine Lavan answered on 12 Jan 2018:

I was planning an experiment and just scribbled down lots of things that I thought I would find in my data. I ran the experiment, looked at the data and with no exception all of these things had worked out! That was a really nice moment because usually you have all these sensible predictions of what’s supposed to happen but then you look at the data and it’s a bit messy: some things may have worked, others may not have worked, some things have gone in exactly the opposite way of what you predicted. In these cases – and this is what happens for most experiments – you then really have to sit down and think about how to explain your results and why they didn’t pop up as planned. This is sometimes easy because hindsight is a beautiful thing but sometimes there’s just no way to explain everything thing you found in a way that makes sense…