Question: do you think you have an 'unrealistic' ambition?

Caspar Addyman answered on 14 Mar 2011:

Hi again Molly,

I hope so. I would like to make a discovery or make up a theory that will still be considered important in fifty years. There are any number of reasons why this is unrealistic.
1. Most scientific work is not groundbreaking or revolutionary. Most of what we do is taking tiny little steps in what we hope is the right direction. So it is very rare to do something that is so important or surprising that people still think it is important or surprising a few years later. Let alone decades later.

2. The speed of scientific discovery seems to getting faster and faster and faster. Partly because there are more scientists than ever before but also because computers are do more and more of the work for us. The faster things get the more likely that our current work will be improved upon or proved wrong by future generations. Well, current generations that be future scientists. The clever people who will correct all my mistakes are probably in GSCE science classes right now..