Hi guys,

i am in my second year of the phd, finally got a research plan together (which everyone i showed it to signed off) and last month started very motivated into experimental work. There was a paper deadline last midnight which i was confident i have some results but it turns out that THE one assumption all my work is built upon is false :( not just off, but completely false (either that or i am too stupid to conduct experiments). I am totally blown through the wind right now, think about quitting the whole PhD business and just get a regular job :(
Anybody any thoughts how i can get out of the deep hole of depression?

greetz

Can you give any more details about how/why the asumption is false?

Remeber that research is often about modifying and/or discarding a hypothesis, not getting results that fit

Hi monkey,

this must be a real blow for you!

Obviously it is normal that you are upset, taking into account the effort you put into it. As such it is important not to take any decisions at this moment in time: they will be blurred due to how you feel.

Believe it or not, if you give yourself some time you will feel somewhat better again. Then it would be time to analyse what happened to you: How come you overlooked this and why was this not picked up by your supervisor?

Once you are beyond analysis you should decide what you are going to do..

Hope this helps

I don't know whether it works in your case but my supervisor told me this morning: a negative results is still a result.It might be really hard but if you look at it from another angel you might be able to say: the theory is wrong and I proved it!
Good luck

I know it feels horrible, but sometimes these things happen, i'm also 1.5 years into my PhD and had the very same thing happen to me. Don't panic, my work was with cells and after the intial tears and tantrums i took the "oh well if the cells don't do it they don't do it- i can't make them do it" attitude, and although my work questions some other people's i can't change the results. Be sure to repeat your experiment and then along with your supervisor have a re-think

thanks for the encouraging words - i feel a little better today and am already knee deep in literature to check if other people came across similar issues at some point.
i can foresee lots of pots of tea and tons of pdfs in my near future ;)