this. featured experts
Professor Leigh Ackland
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
#1 Victorian uni for graduate employment1
#1 in the world for sport science2
#1 Victorian uni for course satisfaction3
#1 Victorian uni for graduate employment1
#1 in the world for sport science2
#1 Victorian uni for course satisfaction3
NEXT UP ON this.
Scientific discoveries have always been the spark that lights the fire of progress.
From penicillin to particle physics, the breakthroughs we celebrate today were once just ideas waiting for the right moment – or sometimes, a happy accident – to shine.
So, what do we really mean by scientific discoveries? Why do they matter so much? And what’s the secret behind those moments that change the course of history?
A scientific discovery is exactly what it sounds like – it’s about uncovering something new that helps us understand the world a bit better. But here’s the thing: not all discoveries are big eureka moments. Many are the result of years of testing, tinkering and simply being curious.
Scientists are often on the cutting edge of advancement, says Professor Leigh Ackland from Deakin University’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences. ‘Scientific discoveries are an ongoing process,’ she says. ‘Every time we do an experiment, we find something new.’
Take the discovery of DNA’s double helix. James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins didn’t just come up with it in one day. They built on years of research and used cutting-edge X-ray techniques to figure out the structure of DNA. Their work didn’t just change how we understand genetics – it also paved the way to revelations in medicine, technology and even crime-solving.
As Professor Ackland puts it, scientific discovery is a process of exploration rather than attempting to identify a linear path from hypothesis to conclusion. Small scientific discoveries happen every day in the lab, but often it’s only after teams of scientists have done a lot of similar experiments over many years that they are able to fully understand what’s going on.
‘Altogether, that’s probably what most people would consider a scientific discovery,’ she says.
Scientific discoveries aren’t just about learning new things – they’re the spark that drives innovation. Whether it’s finding life-saving medical treatments, solving the world’s energy problems or inventing new technologies, discoveries are what keep pushing us forward.
A lot of the time, those scientific discoveries happen when scientists connect dots that no one else saw.
‘When someone has a very creative idea about something, where they might link two independent findings together and follow this up with testing to prove their idea, this can lead to completely novel ways of looking at things,’ says Professor Ackland.
Science, she explains, is a deeply creative process. ‘It’s about being very observant with your experiments and thinking of other explanations for your results. It’s about using your intuition to discover how things work.’
Professor Ackland shares an example from her lab: two identical cells growing in the same conditions, but one behaved differently. ‘When we looked into it, what we found is the conditions that I’d been growing one group of cells under meant that the cells had changed into another cell type,’ she says.
‘When I followed this up, I discovered that it was one of the first examples of how human cancer cells could be “switched on” or “switched off”.
In other words, they discovered that you could influence whether a cell becomes more cancerous or less cancerous – a breakthrough that hadn’t been demonstrated before.
‘It was only by paying attention to those small details of why the cell wasn’t behaving like we thought it might lead to this new insight.’
Science has been reshaping our understanding of the world for centuries. From the ancient Greeks theorising about atoms to the modern discovery of the Higgs boson, each era brings monumental shifts in our knowledge.
The Renaissance, for instance, was a golden age of discovery. Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system, challenging centuries of Earth-centered thinking. This discovery laid the foundation for Galileo and Kepler, whose work transformed how we understand the stars and planets.
In the 20th century, scientific discoveries like the structure of DNA and Einstein’s theory of relativity turned science on its head. And now, in the 21st century, we’re seeing breakthroughs like CRISPR gene editing, which has the potential to cure genetic diseases and revolutionise the future of medicine.
'It's about being very observant with your experiments and thinking of other explanations for your results. Science is actually a really creative process – it's about using your intuition to discover how things work.'Professor Leigh Ackland,
School of Life and Environmental Science, Deakin University
Some scientific discoveries are so iconic, they’re practically part of our cultural DNA.
Take the theory of evolution, for instance. Known as the ‘Father of Evolution’, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 changed the way we understand life on Earth. His theory of natural selection explained how species evolve over time, reshaping biology and offering new insights into everything from genetics to conservation.
Newton’s law of gravity is another classic. Whether or not the apple story is true, his work laid the foundation for classical mechanics and modern physics.
Then there’s the light bulb. While many inventors contributed to its creation, Thomas Edison made it commercially viable, sparking the electric age and changing how we illuminate the world.
Not all scientific discoveries are planned. Sometimes, they happen by accident – a fortunate twist of fate that leads to something groundbreaking.
The discovery of penicillin is a prime example. When Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming came back from holiday in 1928, he discovered a type of green mould had contaminated Petri dishes in his lab – and killed some of the bacteria he’d been growing.
‘The culture wasn’t meant to be contaminated, but it was contaminated by a fungus that stopped it from growing,’ says Professor Ackland. ‘That’s how they discovered antibiotics.’
The microwave oven was another happy accident. Percy Spencer was busy testing radar systems when he noticed a candy bar melting in his pocket. Instead of shrugging it off, he investigated further, eventually creating the household staple we all know and love.
And Velcro? It was born when Swiss engineer George de Mestral took a good look at the burrs sticking to his dog’s fur. The idea of nature-inspired inventions led him to create something that’s now used everywhere, from fashion to space travel.
Some scientific discoveries are so out-there that they aren’t accepted by the scientific community right away.
A well-known example is American scientist Barbara McClintock’s 1940s discovery – long before female researchers became the norm – that instead of stable entities arranged in an ordinary linear pattern, genes could be mobile and hop around the chromosome.
This dramatic shift in our understanding of the genome – dubbed ‘jumping genes’ – was so radical that peer review panels rejected it.
‘Everyone thought it was an absolute load of rubbish, but decades later we know now that this is what happens,’ says Professor Ackland. ‘A lot of very novel discoveries don’t get accepted right away because people can’t cope with something so novel.’
So, how does science keep itself in check when some scientific discoveries sound too wild to be true? That’s where peer review comes in.
Think of it as science’s version of quality control. Before a discovery gets published in a respected journal, it gets reviewed by a group of experts who make sure it holds up.
‘Peer review is very important for the verification of scientific advances,’ says Professor Ackland. ‘Your peer scientists evaluate it and establish whether they think it’s a good study, whether there’s anything that you’ve left unturned, whether it fits in with what other people have done and how novel it is.’
This step not only validates the findings but also makes sure they meet the highest standards, preventing errors and boosting credibility.
And once a study passes peer review, the next key step is replication – making sure other scientists can repeat the experiments and get the same results. As Professor Ackland explains, ‘A team of researchers will often work together – they can be the main discoverers, then other scientists can replicate these experiments, because all the methods are freely available. In this way, it can be proven that it’s right.
‘The collaborative approach to scientific work where scientists are keen to share their results and ideas with other scientists works to promote new discoveries.’
Scientific discovery isn’t just the domain of world-renowned researchers – it’s about curiosity, persistence and asking the right questions.
From breakthroughs that revolutionise our understanding of life to the happy accidents that reshape entire industries, science thrives on exploration.
Whether it’s in a professional lab or through citizen science projects, there’s always room to uncover the unknown. Who knows? The next big leap might be closer than we think.
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
