• Question: How do you know if a question is worth asking, or if it’s better left unanswered?

    Asked by PrushaA on 4 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Erin Pallott

      Erin Pallott answered on 4 Nov 2025:

      That’s a very big, deep question. Science is all about questions: Questioning what we know, what we don’t know yet, and how we could find out. I suppose the main types of research questions that would be better left unanswered would be those that would likely have harmful or unethical outcomes, or would be unethical to perform. Where those boundaries lie would come down to an individual’s own idea of ethics, but of course we also have strict laws in place to prevent harm to patients and animals.

    • Photo: Amy Mason

      Amy Mason answered on 5 Nov 2025:

      I think about how people could be harmed by the answer, or by their perception of the answer.
      For example, I won’t do research into genetic prediction of IQ and how it varies across ethnicity groups. This is because we know that the prediction tools and data is white-biased and won’t come out with useful or correct answers, but worse that those incorrect answers will be used by racist people to promote discrimination and violence against black people.

    • Photo: Boatemaa Ofori-Frimpong

      Boatemaa Ofori-Frimpong answered on 5 Nov 2025:

      I believe there is no such thing as a silly question. Knowledge is not in one person’s head so if you have a question please ask. You never know someone maybe learning from the experience or answer.

    • Photo: Melissa Upjohn

      Melissa Upjohn answered on 6 Nov 2025:

      This is a great question! As Boatemaa has said, there’s no such thing as a silly question, so I would always encourage somebody to ask the question and discuss it with people who are also interested in the topic, to share your ideas and to get their views before you figure out whether it’s worth pursuing it further. It’s also worth finding out whether other scientists have investigated the question or similar questions before by looking for published papers – this is part of a the scientific process of learning what’s already known about the topic, to make sure that a question you want to investigate/study you want to do hasn’t been done before (avoid using up resources which could be used elsewhere) as well as learning from what’s been figured out already. For ethically challenging questions, it can be tricky (such as can we clone a human being) yes in principle the science is technically available. We should always remember,’ just because we can, doesn’t mean we should’ is a useful mantra to consider when thinking about breaking boundaries in science – I use this a lot when thinking about vet work, as we must always consider the wider needs/feelings of the animal and the owner before we decide with the owner what’s best for everybody involved.

Comments