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There comes a time in every scientist’s career when the mind seems to hit a wall. You’ve been there: you can’t think up an experiment that hasn’t been done before, or figure out how to crack a problem that is blocking your progress. The easy questions have been answered. You go back to the wellspring of your creativity and find it dry. What to do?
Being able to depend on a continuing source of inspiration and creative ideas is essential for scientific success. When a field of science is brand new, all experiments are novel and all results are interesting. It’s in trying to address unresolved problems in old fields that the real challenge begins. Unfortunately, humans are creatures of habit and tend to think ...
