A battle..............................

     Like musicians, like mathematicians - like elite athletes - scientists peak early and dwindle fast.  It isn't creativity that fades, but stamina.  Science is an endurance sport.  To produce that single illuminating experiment, a thousand nonilluminating experiments have to be sent into the trash; it is a battle between nature and nerve.

-Siddhartha Mukherjee,  The Gene:  An Intimate History