Building a Better Microscope: 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

On this show, we’ve been talking about uncertainty from a variety of different angles. We’ve heard how uncertainty can be a spark for creativity and scientific discovery. We’ve discussed how uncertainty can go unseen and make science really difficult. And we’ve explored some of the research techniq…

Today’s episode of Uncertain is about the ways that studies can leave us overconfident and how “just-so stories” can make us feel overly certain about results that are still a work in progress. And sometimes studies get misleading results because of random error or weird samples or study design. Bu…

Science is an iterative process. Progress comes from people coming up with ideas that are sort of right and then new evidence and ideas coming in to update them to become even more correct. Underlying this process is a willingness by scientists to accept that they might be wrong and be open to upda…

Welcome to Uncertain, a five-part podcast miniseries from Scientific American. Here we will dive head first into the possibilities of the unknowing. Over the next five episodes, I’ll be talking with people like her: explorers who work in the realm of uncertainty. Through them, we’ll discover the wa…