Question: What do you do if you go a long time without making a new discovery

Ashley Hughes answered on 12 Nov 2015:

Well, that is a lot of the time to be honest. Much of our time is spent making minor improvements to things we already know about, refining our theories or making them more accurate.

When nothing is working however, I usually take a break, try to change project for a couple of weeks as sometimes you can become too involved and make very little progress as you get stuck into a line of thought so need to remove yourself.

Another important way to deal with situations where nothing works is to go to the pub or for tea with a colleague and just talk it through, new perspectives often lead to different ideas and angles that you may not of thought of.