Hi Cali,
So far, I have not ever been so surprised and excited by a new and unexpected discovery that I ran down the hall
screaming "Yoooreeka!" But you never know, maybe someday that might happen! ;)
Most of the time, progress in my research
develops slowly over time, so I can kind of see where things are going
and I am not too surprised by the result. That being said, when one of
my papers that I had been working on for a very long time was finally
published earlier this summer, I was so excited that I told all my
friends and co-workers about it so they would go download my paper!
Everybody
makes mistakes sometimes, which is why I ask all of my co-authors to
read through my papers before I submit them to the scientific journal.
After we submit a paper to a scientific journal, the editor sends it to
two anonymous scientists so they can review the paper and check for
mistakes too. People in my department are currently building
instruments for future NASA satellite missions. To make sure that any
mistakes are caught early on in the instrument development, they follow
very strict documentation procedures to track changes in the design and
which parts have been used. This way, if something does go wrong, they
can figure out what happened quickly.
Kris