Question: what happens if you idea does not work

Jon Copley answered on 15 Jun 2010:

This happens a lot! There’s a lot of trying things that don’t work in research, until you find something that does. When an idea doesn’t work, you have to figure out why it didn’t work, and then try something else now that you know that.

For example, it took us a couple of weeks during a recent expedition to find the world’s deepest undersea volcanic vents. We thought we knew where they would be, based on the data we had on the geology and oceanography of the ocean trench where we were working. But our first ideas about where they were turned out to be wrong – we didn’t fully understand the geology down there.

But by going back to square one, and examining every one of the assumptions in our ideas, and with new data from trying our first idea, we figured it out. For me, that’s what makes science great – you learn from your “mistakes”. So it is really important not to be afraid to get things wrong, because that’s what helps you get things right in the end (so long as you’re prepared to admit you were wrong, and ask yourself why).

However, if you are asking about my idea for what I’d do with the prize money (rather than the ideas that I test in my research), then that’s different. We know our plan will work, because we already have a communications link back to land from our ship. On my last expedition we ran a website from the ship, and it was visited by more than 50 000 people from 89 countries. But the new computer would allow us to send more information – like live video – through that link, rather than just webpages of text and pictures that we’ve sent until now.