I am one of those people that came straight into the PhD after undergrad. Sure, I had some “research experience”, but needless to say, the reality of research was far from what I thought it to be. One of the first lessons that I learned in graduate school is that science never happens the way it is described in a paper. Experiments are written up in a manner that makes the best story, even if the “hypothesis” was never stated until after the experiments were finished and the conclusions were already made. In grade school, I was taught that you first formulate a hypothesis to solve an important problem; and then you test it. When it is wrong, you formulate another hypothesis, test that one, and continue in this manner until you find a solution to the larger problem. After reading many scientific papers and being involved in the creation of their data, I quickly learned that research rarely happens this way. Often, your hypothesis is adjusted and readjusted until your data support some “exciting” conclusion. Thank goodness, too, because I thought all these authors must be much smarter than me to formulate such an incredible hypothesis—I was never going to make it. To me, it seems wrong to go about science this way; but it is our livelihood. Does anyone know of any journals that will take an incomplete story or let you state all the hypotheses that you failed to support? I don’t think you could get a grant unless your experimental approach and preliminary data suggest that your hypothesis is extremely likely to be correct. You practically have to prove your specific aims before you are given the money to do them. Academics are forced to formulate the hypothesis that is most desirable by the funding agency. Sometimes, I wonder if science wouldn’t progress faster if researchers where allowed to follow the most interesting data whereever it may lead them. With today’s reliance on government grants and the “publish or perish” attitude, I think we may be missing out on some of the most interesting finds. However, I don’t know any independently wealthy researchers that can afford to pay for their own research; so, this isn’t likely to change anytime soon.