The seventeenth-century physicist Sir Isaac Newton is remembered chiefly for his treatises on motion and gravity  But Newton also conducted experiments secretly for many years based on the arcane theories of alchemy, trying unsuccessfully to transmute common metals into gold and produce rejuvenating elixirs
If the alchemists of the seventeenth century had published the results of their experiments, chemistry in the eighteenth century would have been more advanced than it actually was
Advances in science are hastened when reports of experiments, whether successful or not, are available for review by other scientists.