All manner of research relies on noticing and on being alive and alert to the possibility of the unexpected.

One of the researchers I admire most is Jocelyn Bell Burnett, the physicist. She ‘discovered’ pulsars. She noticed an aberrant signal on a printout from a radio telescope and then eventually, much later and almost serendipitously, noticed another.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-4e93q1NdI

Bell Burnett’s doctoral supervisor won the biggest science prize going for this noticing – and it’s often referred to as the No-Bell as a result.