It is for good reason that researchers are the object of envy. When not stuck with bothersome tasks such as grant applications, reviews, or preparing lectures, they actually get paid for pursuing their wildest ideas! To boldly go where no human has gone before! We poke about through scientific literature, carry out pilot experiments that surprisingly almost always succeed. Then we do a series of carefully planned and costly experiments. Sometimes they turn out well, often not, but they do lead us into the unknown. This is how ideas become hypotheses; one hypothesis leads to those that follow, and voila, low and behold, we confirm them! In the end, sometimes only after several years and considerable wear and tear on personnel and material, we manage then to weave a “story” out of them (see also). Through a complex chain of results the story closes with a “happy end”, perhaps in the form of a new biological mechanism, but at least as a little piece to fit the puzzle, and it is always presented to the world by means of a publication. Sometimes even in one of the top journals. Continue reading →