• Question: Would you spend the prize money on helping your job and research?

    Asked by kw28 to Marianne, Emma, Andrew on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by smilies123, thebeasts.
    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi kw28,

      we’re actually supposed to spend the money on communicating science in some way. Luckily, this is part of my work, so there are loads of things I could spend the money on. But what I would really like to do is buy you guys a really cool book on science by a couple of friends of mine.

      (that would be one book per class, not per student by the way – £500 is a lot pm money, but not that much!)

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      I think we have to spend it on communicating science so I guess not. However, the Wellcome trust who funded imascientist paid me to do my resarch and they were very generous about how many experiments they let me do. So to be honest £500 wouldn’t go very far. I think it would be more useful for communicating science though so I’m sure I could find something useful to do with it.

      Henry Wellcome (founder of the charity) said ‘you should never tell anybody what you’re going to do until you’ve done it’ so i guess he wasn’t a true-believer in science communication. However, i think it’s probably good advice if a little cynical.

    • Photo: Emma Pilgrim

      Emma Pilgrim answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi I don’t think strictly speaking this is allowed! The money should be spent on promoting science to the public which in turn could help my job if I was able to show more people why it is so important to be able to produce nutritious food without damaging the environment

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hey kw28,

      Probably not – as the IAS ‘about’ page says, £500, in terms of research, is a tiny amount of money!

      Sometimes less than 1 millilitre of reagent (stuff to use in the lab) can cost that much.

      So, it’s better to think of something to spend it on that will make more of a difference; though I could donate it to Cancer Research UK, the charity I work for, as they have a big communication department that it could be useful to.

      What do you think? Would it be better to think up a little science communication project that I could do, or donate to something bigger? I haven’t worked it out yet!

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