What thought processes guide researchers? How does a good research question emerge, and how can it be turned into an experiment? What happens when the unexpected occurs? How easy—or difficult—is it to let go of a hypothesis one has worked on for a long time? Drawing on their different fields of research, Emiliano Biasini and Andrea Ditadi take us behind the scenes of scientific research, where curiosity, imagination, and rigour are constantly tested against the evidence provided by the data.