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Asked by anon-196441 to Sebastian, Paddy, Lee, Jennifer, Fiona, Eleanor on 4 Mar 2019.
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Sebastian Cosgrove answered on 4 Mar 2019:
You don’t know what you haven’t discovered yet! Can you imagine a world without the internet? That was only 50 years ago. Who knows where science will take us in the future? My prediction is a lot more computer-based work, and self-learning machines (not quite terminator though!). What do you think will happen in the future?
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Eleanor Senior answered on 4 Mar 2019:
I think it’s very hard to predict since the world is changing so fast, there were only around 140 years between the invention of morse code and the invention of the internet. I think computers and AI will improve and many jobs that will be available in 10 years don’t even exist yet. I also hope that we will be able to create things to replace plastic and fossil fuels and to help combat disease without having to use antibiotics.
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Lee Steinberg answered on 4 Mar 2019:
It is hard to predict what is going to happen in science in the next 5 years, so doing long term prediction is impossible. Currently, the explosion of research in AI and other fields look like they will revolutionise the way we perform the time-consuming yet low effort tasks, in the same sense that automation has changed the way chemical synthesis can happen. For example, see work done with the ‘chemputer’ https://phys.org/news/2018-11-chemputer-app-controlled-revolution-drug-production.html
I don’t think we are ever going to run out of questions to ask – but it is impossible to predict how we are going to answer them!
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Fiona Scott answered on 4 Mar 2019:
In chemistry an increasing amount of work is being done by robots instead of humans. Day to day lab work involves measuring out liquids, mixing things and doing lots of other things over and over again. Inventions like chemistry microwaves, automated purification systems and other robots like the chemputer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvEkm7ZBKSc do those jobs faster than people do, freeing up time for chemists to put on more experiments or spend time analysing data in graphs and tables.
I think in the future chemists will spend more time thinking about what is going on in a test tube rather than handling chemicals.
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Paddy Sudhakar answered on 4 Mar 2019:
I would answer the question differently. The future of science (if the true spirit of science is to be maintained) is to understand and maintain health. At the moment, there is a lot of money spent on post-disease management and cures. When will Science turn to understand health and how health is maintained ?
Similarly, when it comes to ecological systems, science has failed us. our scientific innovations (most of them) and development in the name of science has degraded biodiversity and our natural resources.
So, science can evolve only if it recognizes and contributes to maintaining the homeostasis (alias health) of our ecosystems – both inside and outside us. For this to happen, the technical sciences have to merge with the behavioural sciences. Human behaviour is one of the limiting factors in determining how well or how stupid scientific technologies can be used. If we dont address, human behaviour, having all the technologies in the world wont be of any use.
To sum it up – science needs to become more holistic.
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Jennifer Harris answered on 5 Mar 2019:
Science is always evolving. Look at technology. When I was 10yrs old I had a big chunky computer in my bedroom with dial-up internet and a top-up sim-card mobile phone with an antenna. Now we have smart phones and kindles, Netflix and Youtube. In the same way that Technology Science is evolving, Medical Science is evolving too. Decades ago we thought the only way to cure cancer was by targeting the over-growing tumour cells. But now we know it’s a complex set of diseases with a number of genetic and immune factors, which requires a multi-pronged and personalised approach.
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