Discovery depends on establishing that a problem is significant enough to be labeled an important achievement. Future cognitive research should study situations where scientists have to make decisions about which research to pursue and also develop laboratory simulations that permit participants to choose among a set of scientific tasks. Discovery depends on transforming that problem into a form that suggests a promising path to solution which includes locating and transforming the necessary data. In terms of locating data, the literature on dual-space search is helpful, suggesting that a careful, coordinated search of both hypothesis and experiment spaces is most likely to uncover evidence that is relevant to the problem at hand. The result is the kind of abstraction used by Galileo to solve pendulum problems.
More research needs to be done on what happens when experts move out of their familiar domains.
Here work on analogies may be especially helpful. Local analogies appear especially useful in research teams, allowing mental models and techniques that are useful in one domain to be transferred to a closely-related domain. Darwin saw that an identical struggle took place throughout nature, and he realized that it could be turned into a truly creative force. Darwin made an analogy between the human struggle exemplified by the poor laws and pauper riots, and the struggle between species, an analogy that certainly seems remote, if not distant. Part of Malthus' argument was that the weak would succumb in the human struggle for increasingly scarce resources.