Thank you for this article! I think it's very difficult for non-scientists to understand the the language of scientific papers (much like it is hard for me to understand how to properly fill in the annual tax declaration - it's good we have specialists in all kinds of fields).

I like how your text pretty much shows what scientists experience on a day-to-day basis: Failure is part of the job - about 99.9 % of the time. "Promising" means a myriad of tests have to be carried out until we can be sure it really works (most of the "promising" substances only turn out to work in vitro - i.e. in the Petri dish or in a microplate). Selecting an appropriate method is essential.

I hope a lot of people will read this to understand scientific work better and to see that severe illnesses, such as cancer or diabetes, are still best treated by doctors because they get access to the products of years of scientific work.