• Question: What was the saddest thing you have experienced as a scientist?

    Asked by ErinM2017 to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 8 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 8 Mar 2017:

      When people won’t discuss the evidence and continue to do things that we know are harming animals. If people would just keep an open mind and be willing to talk then we could improve things but otherwise you wonder if there’s any point in your work and whether things will ever get better. Then I talk to people like all of you who are full of questions and listen and I feel better about things.

    • Photo: Ines Goncalves

      Ines Goncalves answered on 8 Mar 2017:

      Watching Al Gore lose the presidential election in 2000 has to be up there. Closer to home, I have experienced unnecessary and unreasonable competition from colleagues who had no need to act that way. Competition for funding, for jobs and for recognition is very fierce in academia and such stress doesn’t always bring up the best qualities in people. It all worked out in the end.

    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      The saddest thing for me has been losing some of my study animals. I lost two young calves suddenly to elephant herpes virus which just seemed so very cruel. It also came as a huge shock. You get to know the animals so well that they almost feel like family pets so it can be hard to stomach when you lose them.

    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      The saddest thing for me was going back to the islands where I study a bird called the corn bunting and finding that they had all disappeared from one island. All those songs which will never be heard again, like old folk songs that people have forgotten over the years.

    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      When one of the chickens that I had breed from young passed away.

      He was really cool and would come up to me everyday I arrived at the farm, never struggles when I carried him up. Unfortunately, he died of old age and that was devastating.

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