"Much can often be learned by the repetition under different conditions, even if the desired result is not obtained"
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A scientist admitting, almost dryly, that failure is data - if you have the discipline to rerun it with the knobs turned. Archer J. P. Martin (best known for pioneering chromatography) is speaking from a lab culture where progress rarely arrives as a cinematic breakthrough. It arrives as a pattern teased out of stubborn repeats: same procedure, altered solvent, different temperature, a cleaner column, a new contaminant. The line’s quiet provocation is that the experiment’s official goal is often a decoy; the real payoff is what the system reveals when it refuses to behave.
“Repetition under different conditions” is doing heavy work. It’s not rote; it’s variation with intent. Martin is describing a method for extracting meaning from a world that won’t hand you clean causal stories. When the “desired result is not obtained,” ego wants to call it wasted effort. He reframes it as the moment when hidden variables announce themselves: the equipment drift, the sample instability, the assumption you didn’t know you were making.
The subtext is also a defense of patience against the tyranny of outcomes. In research, publishing pressure and grant logic reward successful endpoints. Martin’s sentence restores dignity to the long middle: troubleshooting as inquiry, not mere cleanup. Read broadly, it’s an argument for iterative thinking in any complex system - medicine, policy, product design - where the fastest route to insight is often a controlled series of near-misses.
“Repetition under different conditions” is doing heavy work. It’s not rote; it’s variation with intent. Martin is describing a method for extracting meaning from a world that won’t hand you clean causal stories. When the “desired result is not obtained,” ego wants to call it wasted effort. He reframes it as the moment when hidden variables announce themselves: the equipment drift, the sample instability, the assumption you didn’t know you were making.
The subtext is also a defense of patience against the tyranny of outcomes. In research, publishing pressure and grant logic reward successful endpoints. Martin’s sentence restores dignity to the long middle: troubleshooting as inquiry, not mere cleanup. Read broadly, it’s an argument for iterative thinking in any complex system - medicine, policy, product design - where the fastest route to insight is often a controlled series of near-misses.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
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