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Asked by cookiejayden to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 19 Nov 2013.
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David Christensen answered on 19 Nov 2013:
That’s a nice question, thanks cookiejayden!
Firstly, I don’t think anyone will ever say that no more research could be done before writing a book, so I will say that I am still studying and do need to do more research!
But, I think it would be possibly for me to make a book about science. If you tell me I am only allowed to write about my own research, then it might be relatively short and maybe not very interesting! But actually if I write about my work with embryonic stem cells and energy metabolism for somebody who doesn’t know much about these, then I need to write a long introduction to give background to help them understand what I’ve done and why I’ve done it. The longest thing I’ve written is about 140 pages including a 50 page long introduction to give background for my work. This introduction is based on work that other scientists have done before me as all science research is, but I need to explain it for people to understand what I did after it. With a bit more work and a more detailed introduction, I guess I could write a book about my research and we have to write something like that to finish our PhDs. But it would still not be very interesting to many people!
If you would allow me to write about anything and not just my work, then with enough reading to learn more about what I want to write about, I could probably write a book, but it would definitely not be easy. I’m not really a very good writer!
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Matthew Tomlinson answered on 19 Nov 2013:
Well, my PhD thesis was a book of sorts. It details everything that I did during my PhD, all the experiments, why I did them, what they mean and what things I would do in the future. It’s about 250 pages long and is about 40,000 words. We are examined on our thesis at the end of our studies by another senior scientist from a different university who decides whether or not we’ve done enough to get a PhD. However, I think me and the examiners are the only people who have ever read my thesis!
I would love to write a book, either fiction or non-fiction. I really enjoy writing and would love to have more time for it. I think there is always a need for more research and things change with time, but it is important for it to be written about, even if we don’t fully understand it, so that other people can try to understand the topic as well.
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