• Question: How do you know when you're doing research what to look for next and what you should do further research on? Have there ever been any moments when something does not go as expected and you do not know what to do next? What do you do then?

    Asked by anon-254662 on 15 May 2020.
    • Photo: Lucy McGowan

      Lucy McGowan answered on 15 May 2020: last edited 15 May 2020 9:05 am

      Fantastic question. It can be challenging, but fun!
      In between experiments I pause to look at and analyse my data. The results of my previous experiment will help me to decide the best route to take next; maybe I will have to repeat the last experiment if the results weren’t clear enough, maybe the results will provide evidence to support my central hypothesis (ideas about the way the disease works). Sometimes the results are surprising, and not at all what I expected. In this case, I might design new experiments to try to find out more. That’s the most fun thing about beings a scientist – there’s always surprises. It can also be the most confusing and frustrating thing about it too.
      If a result seems odd or surprising, I would usually read research around the topic from other scientists first, to see if I can make sense of the odd result. Maybe another scientist found a similar result, in which case that would support my data. Either way it’s a good idea to repeat the experiment if you can to be sure. This isn’t always possible though; sometimes an experiments can be very expensive, time consuming, or use precious samples. In this case, making sure you have a good, reliable experimental set up (including control data) and reading other scientists’ research is a great way to understand your results and make sensible decisions about what to do next!

    • Photo: Alex Holmes

      Alex Holmes answered on 15 May 2020:

      Hi!

      So, when you first start out in science you usually apply to or work on projects other people have thought up. So they’ve already thought about what experiments to do and how to do them and what results we want to look out for. However, once you get more experience and information about the area you’re working in and what other people in the area are working on you can start to see “gaps” in the information, then once you get a bit more experience you can think about ways to fill those gaps and what experiments could be done to get more information. At this point, you can start writing your own projects and apply for money to work on them yourself!

      Even within someone else’s project you might notice an interesting result and be able to investigate it further yourself. So, when i first started my PhD, i was being taught how to make simulations of proteins (basically making things move and wiggle using a supercomputer). I made a bunch of practice simulations and practiced doing almost every kind of analysis possible so I could get used to the computer and software. One of the analyses on the practice simulations gave us a completely unexpected result – that the protein was interacting with its environment in a way we hadn’t seen before. I knew that this was unexpected, so with help from my supervisor we planned what to do next: find out more and check this happened a couple more times rather than just a one off. I then also checked to see what other researchers that look at proteins in different environments and started to do the things they were doing, and we managed to make a whole new mini project that no one had otherwise expected!!

      The nice thing about science is you can always ask for help if you’re not sure, because people LOVE discussing unexpected results – it’s exciting!

    • Photo: Craig Johnson

      Craig Johnson answered on 15 May 2020:

      Great question, thank you! One of the things I love most about science is that there is never really an “answer” – what we do is continue to ask more and more questions. Often, even when we get close to what we might think of as an answer, more questions become clear. For example, we might be working on the exact cause of a disease. We can work and work until it becomes clear that you’ve identified the cause, but is that cause the same in all people, of all genders, ages, races etc? Is the cause likely to change or is it stable? We then move on to answer these questions and in doing this, science gets ever more complicated and our understanding of the world becomes increasingly detailed.
      In terms of when things don’t go to plan – this happens all the time! The whole point of doing experiments should be that you don’t know what is going to happen. It’s a test of your ideas – if you knew what was going to happen, there’s no need to do it! When things don’t go to plan, that’s when science excels and we get to work out the nitty gritty of what to do next.

    • Photo: Judith Sleeman

      Judith Sleeman answered on 15 May 2020: last edited 15 May 2020 4:13 pm

      That is such a good question! When we design an experiment, we set up a question that we want to test. 9 times out of 10, we don’t get a clear answer, just a whole load more questions. The trick really is deciding which ones to follow up on. I usually have half a dozen potential projects stored away to follow up the less obvious questions from old experiments when time (and funding) allows. In my experience, the most important discoveries have been made when things DON’T go as expected and I’ve had to sit down and think long and hard about my original ideas. If it’s really not clear what to do next, I try to think about a different project for a while instead (one from my store!). Then I come back to the one I am stuck on, maybe do a whole lot of reading of previously published work about similar questions, talk to other people about the problem, and hope one of us finds some inspiration. Usually this works, but there are always some puzzles that we can’t solve. Sometimes, if you leave them for long enough, some new results or even new equipment and techniques come along that help.

    • Photo: Emma Daniels

      Emma Daniels answered on 15 May 2020:

      Hi Sangavi, that’s a great question! Research can be very fluid. I like following plans, so I always try to plan out my experiments are much as possible. I find this helps me to stay focused on my goals and helps me know what experiment I’m going to do next if the one I’m currently doing goes as planned. Buttttt a lot of the time things don’t go as planned! This can be upsetting but it’s a big part of doing scientific research and it can actually be very exciting. When this happens, I might do extra experiments and tests to figure out why it didn’t work as we expected. My supervisor and other members of my lab group often help with this as they might have come across a similar problem before. One of the best parts of science is working together like this, and often this gives us lots of new things to explore and research.

      Another big part of being a researcher is keeping up with what other scientists are doing in your area of study. I do this my reading papers (which are scientific articles written by other scientists) and going to conferences. Seeing what other people are doing is very inspiring and often I find whole new things to research!

    • Photo: Alena Pance

      Alena Pance answered on 15 May 2020:

      Hi Sangavi, my research subjects usually start with a question about a process, how does it work or what role does a certain molecule play in it or what happens if we expose a cell to a chemical. Once we have a question, we think of a way to find out the answer and that guides us to design the experiments we need to do. Then we start doing these experiments, we need to make sure they are technically working to be certain that the results are due to the biology and not a ‘glitch’ of the method and we also have to repeat them several times to prove they are real. The results of the experiments we do guide the next steps, whether they agree with what we initially thought or not. If the results are unexpected, we need to sit back and think and read and plan experiments that would tell us what is going on. If the results are what we expected then we usually look for other ways of reinforcing them and plan further experiments to go deeper into the biology and understand more.
      Reading what other scientists have done and what is known about the question we are trying to work out is essential. On one hand because we don’t want to be re-inventing the wheel every time, secondly because it gives us hints as to how to plan the best experiments to find out what we are after and most importantly if our results are unexpected then understanding the process and the biology underneath it all is crucial. This is very exciting actually because it means uncharted territory that gives an opportunity to discover new things!

Comments

  • Photo: anon-254662

    anon-254662 commented on :

    Thank you for all the answers. It is very interesting to hear how you all approach unexpected outcomes. It seems that extra reading around the subject, repeating the experiment to see if similar outcomes arise again and asking others is the way to go. 🙂