Are Discoveries discovered by accident or on purpose by a scientist?

Question

Iv always wondered this because im interesting in being someone who discovers cures for diseases and i dont know what you would call that. Either by accident or on purpose, it really fascinates me a lot. I know it is a scientist, but what kind of scientist?

Biomedical scientist? Please help me out, im 18 and i still dont know what i wanna do as a career, i just know what interests me!

Answer 1

If you want to research diseases, it is usually done at a university. It is done on purpose, although sometimes what you find is not what you were looking for. For example, you might try a new chemical on a disease, and find that it doesn't cure the disease at all, but perhaps it does something else like lowering your blood pressure.

If you study biology or medicine at university, you can go on to do a PhD where you become a doctor. The requirement for this is you must do research into something new.

If you work at a lab in a hospital it will be doing tests not research.