Hi Cali,

I can't say I've ever screamed when I discovered something new, but I have gotten excited. I definitely check my results over several times and show them to colleagues and discuss them to make sure I'm not doing something wrong or missing something obvious. For sure we all get things wrong sometimes. It is when you've looked at something several different ways and checked several different explanations for why what you think you are seeing isn't real and keep coming back to the conclusion that this is something new that you get excited. It is a pretty neat feeling.

-Christina

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.