So I think a lot about how to be a better scientist, and during my reading I found a sparkly little gem by one of the greatest experimentalists of all time, Michael Faraday. It's quoted in Analysis and Presentation of Experimental Results as above, but from Wikiquote we get the whole story:
"The secret is comprised in three words — Work, finish, publish." His well-known advice to the young William Crookes, who had asked him the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, as quoted in Michael Faraday (1874) by John Hall Gladstone, p. 123Well said. The middle part often seems the hardest for many people, in my experience: it's all too easy to work on something without finishing it, or to rush to publish something before it's really ready. The hard part is pushing through all three in the right order with the appropriate level of effort. -the Centaur Pictured: Michael Faraday, Photograph by Maull & Polyblank. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY.
Inspirational physicist Richard Feynman once said "the sole test of any idea is experiment." I prefer the formulation "the sole test of any idea open to observation is experiment," because opening our ideas to observation - rather than relying on just belief, instrumentation, or arguments - is often the hardest challenge in making progress on otherwise seemingly unresolvable problems.
-the Centaur