Random failures with StaleElementReferenceException in selenium tests in Jenkins

I'm unable to reproduce this on my development environment. I had a look at jenkins.cessda.eu and it seems that this failure has not been happening for a while, so I'm not sure if there is anything to do here.

I did see - and was able to reproduce - another unrelated failure (https://jenkins.cessda.eu/view/CDC/job/cessda.cdc.test/job/main/405/execution/node/112/log/):

========================================= FAILURES ==========================================
__________________ FirefoxTestCase.test_find_studies_in_french_with_topic ___________________

self = <test_cdc_firefox.FirefoxTestCase testMethod=test_find_studies_in_french_with_topic>

    def test_find_studies_in_french_with_topic(self):
        """As a user I am interested in finding studies for a
        specific language that are within a specified topic

        - https://github.com/cessda/cessda.cdc.versions/issues/588
        """
        # I use the language selection functionality next to the search box
        self._change_catalogue_lang("French")
        # After clicking on the Topic bar in the menu at the left,
        # I can start to type the topic I am interested in or
        # select from the list
        self.driver.find_element(
            By.XPATH,
            "//div[contains(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' filter--classifications.term ')]/div",
        ).click()
        self.driver.find_element(
            By.XPATH, '//div[@id="react-select-3--value"]/div[2]/input'
        ).send_keys("Edu")
        first_opt_el = self.driver.find_element(
            By.XPATH, '//div[@id="react-select-3--option-0"]'
        )
        selected_option_text = first_opt_el.text
        first_opt_el.click()
        # I expect to see results with the specified language and topic
        sk_hits_el = self.driver.find_elements(
            By.XPATH, "//div[@class='sk-hits-stats__info']"
        )[0]
        assert " studies found in French from a total of " in sk_hits_el.text
        # make sure the selected topic is active in GUI
        selected_topic = self.driver.find_element(
            By.XPATH, '//span[@id="react-select-3--value-0"]/span[1]'
        )
>       assert selected_topic.text == selected_option_text
E       AssertionError: assert 'éducation et formation' == 'éducation et formation (117)'
E         - éducation et formation (117)
E         ?                       ------
E         + éducation et formation

src/common.py:599: AssertionError
================================== short test summary info ==================================
FAILED src/test_cdc_firefox.py::FirefoxTestCase::test_find_studies_in_french_with_topic - AssertionError: assert 'éducation et formation' == 'éducation et formation (117)'

My understanding of this is that for some reason the topic-filter is not working properly in "datacatalogue-dev.cessda.eu", and this is an actual error in CDC in this particular environment. It does work as expected in production environment.

Any thoughts @matthew-morris-cessda ?

cessda / cessda.cdc.versions

Random failures with StaleElementReferenceException in selenium tests in Jenkins #616