Question: What is the hardest part about your researcher

Clay Robinson answered on 5 May 2016:

The hardest part of research. Hmmm,
Well, when you are curious, you always are making observations and wondering about why things happen or how they are related. There is never a shortage of questions that need to be investigated and answered.
There are three major things I find difficult in research.
First, in order to use science to test an idea, we need to phrase the question in the form of an hypothesis we can use to design an experiment. The results of the experiment should answer the hypothesis in a specific, not general, manner. Sometimes it is difficult to understand how to ask a good question that will help explain our observation.
Second, time is always a limiting factor. There are SO many questions out there that need answers. But we only have so much time to devote to finding answers to those questions. This requires us to decide which questions to pursue. Sometimes these are not the questions that interest us most, but the ones for which we can reasonably expect to obtain results. We are evaluated on the progress in our research by how many reports we can publish in scientific journals. This success rate affects another major issue.
Third, money limits our ability to pursue a question. Experiments require time and equipment. Money is required to buy or rent equipment, to maintain labs, and to pay salaries of the scientists and technicians. Sometimes this money is provided by the companies for which we work. Other times the money is awarded in a competitive grant process. That means we write and submit a proposal, a document that explains what we intend to do, what kind of results we expect to get, how those results will address our question, and how much money we need to accomplish all that. But scientists all over the country are doing the same thing, so a group of people evaluate and rank the proposals based on a scale to determine the merit, and only a few of the proposals will be awarded the money to conduct the experiment.
And so, a scientist may have a great idea for an experiment and a good research question, but not have the time to do it, or may not be able to get the money to do it.