The opposite of eureka II: nature

The American philosopher and onetime riverboat captain Samuel Leghorn Clemens once wrote, “It is best to prove things by actual experiment, then you know; whereas you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you will never get educated.” Wise words. But then, he didn’t have to get his experiments to work in order to publish; he just published. He was Mark Twain, of course, and he dealt with failure in his investments not his research.