• Question: So if you're a researcher and you find something unbelievable and get loads of money for it, what would you do with it? Maybe research for other things even though they might not be successful or for sometihng else?

    Asked by auksev to Chris, Kay, Kerstin, Lorna, Liv on 16 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Olivia Hibbitt

      Olivia Hibbitt answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Hi Auksev,

      unfortunately even if I discovered the cure for familial hypercholesterolaemia I’m unlikely to get loads of money personally! What it would do is make me a good candidate for science funding. Basically to get money for research we have to write evil things called grants. I’m writing one at the moment which is sucking my will to live! We need to put in preliminary data, say what we want to do, why we think it would work and how much money we need to do it. This then gets read by other scientists who decide whether it is a good idea and then the funding organisation decides whether they want to give us the money.

      Making an amazing discovery would help me with these sorts of applications. Of course if I won the lottery I’d use the money to do my own research without having to write grants….man that would be awesome!!!

    • Photo: Kerstin Zechner

      Kerstin Zechner answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Most of the time when you get money as a researcher, you first have to apply for it and give a detailed description of what you’d use the money for and what experiments you plan to do. So I’d definitely use it for further research. If I got money in some other way, I think I would again be selfish and spend it on equipment, reagents etc. for my lab.

    • Photo: Kay Penicud

      Kay Penicud answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Hi there,

      Personally I get absolutely zero cash if I find something unbelievable. I work for the charity Cancer Research UK, so if I find something cool they get all the money.

      If I did win the lottery though, I would definitely use it to research science that is very interesting but not profitable. For example, there are tons of diseases out there not researched because they are not profitable for durg companies (either because they are very rare or because they are mainly suffered by people from developing countries that couldn’t afford the drugs even if they were invented). I’d use it to research those diseases.

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