<p>If I were to do a biological experiment with a professor would it be ok if the experiment was done before like 10 years ago? Or does it have to be a completely new experiment that no one ever thought of before?</p>
<p>Hard to say. What is the purpose of doing it? To learn, to see if things have changed, etc. So the answer depends on the reason you are doing it. Replication is common, but often for different reasons.</p>
<p>1321…, Your hypothesis and how you arrived at it tends to be important.</p>
<p>Using a procedure or process adopted from a different experiment is fine if
it helps you answer the questions raised in your hypothesis.</p>
<p>If it’s already been done, what would the professor’s motive be for redoing it? Would it be to diminish his professional standing, or simply to waste time and money?</p>
<p>You can use the old (and ten years ago is not old) project as a jumping off point for addressing a new question, but unless there’s a reason to believe the previous work is flawed somehow, no tenure track professor worth his salt is going to want to redo it.</p>
<p>^I have to agree, are you trying to disprove the hypothesis of 10 years ago. It needs to be different or an extension somehow, I don’t really see the value of simply repeating for replication, unless there is evidence to saw the old experiment was flawed.</p>
<p>If you set up an experiment, it doesn’t have to be completely new or unheard of. It would be very hard to find a subject that has no research on it. You can use an old experiment as a jumping off point. However, you do have to change something (or a few things) about the experiment to make it different, and justify why you think your new experiment contributes something new. Doesn’t have to be radical: change the sample group, change the variable, change the method of measurement etc. For example, I’m doing an experiment right now that is based on one from a few years ago. Its about music and its effects on aggression. I changed the sample group from adults to adolescents, and I changed the variable from music with violent lyrics to instrumental music. That, combined with the testing method from the old experiment, created an new study that as far as I know has not been done before. So you don’t have to start from scratch.</p>